


Come and See

by JessieMay



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Dark, Disturbing Themes, Episode: s06e09 Battle of the Bastards, F/M, Gang Rape, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Non-consensual masturbation, Protective Jon, Protective Sansa, Public Humiliation, Season/Series 06, Sibling Bonding, Verbal Humiliation, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 20:27:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 31,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7452901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessieMay/pseuds/JessieMay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The battle for Winterfell is lost but before Sansa has a chance to make good on her promise to Jon and end her life, she is captured and returned to Ramsay. As she is presented to her husband, Sansa is surprised and dismayed to find Jon too kneeling at the foot of the throne. Ramsay is about to carry out his own promise when Jon speaks out on Sansa's behalf with a request too compelling for the new Lord of Winterfell to refuse.</p><p>[Tags added progressively.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Come and See

They hunt her down and pry the dagger from her fingers before she can end it.

When they arrive at Winterfell, Ramsay is sitting atop the throne, looking fresher than any soldier in the room, and there are a great many soldiers there. Sansa thinks that their own motley collection of wildlings and spare guardsmen fought well to chip away at Ramsay’s army, but there are still enough soldiers remaining to fill the Great Hall wall-to-wall and make it difficult for the two huntsmen to shove her to the front.

When she’s pushed to her knees at the base of the stone steps, the sight of Jon beside her revives her from her numb stupor.

“Ah, wife. And here we were all beginning to worry.”

“No-” Jon, seeing her as well, speaks up but is silenced immediately by the sword tip beneath his stubbled chin.

Ramsay gives a small flourish of his fingers and the swordsman at Jon’s side allows a small distance between skin and metal.

Jon clears his throat but when he speaks again it’s still a ragged sound.

“It’s me,” he says, slightly breathless. “I’m the one you should punish. It was my war. I planned it. I gathered the men. I lead the charge. I am the one who challenged your rule of Winterfell. Not her.”

“She ran,” Ramsay counters, his cold eyes pinning her down. “To the enemy.”

“Running is not the same as fighting and does not deserve the same punishment.”

“I'll give her the punishment that I promised in my letter to Castle Black, Snow, and no less. Surely, you can appreciate a king who keeps his word.”

Jon stares down at the ground then flashes a brief glance at Sansa, who would tell him to shut his mouth if she could only find her voice.

“Let me take her place,” he says, turning to Ramsay again. “I'm the one who lead the charge. She had nothing to do with it.”

“While I admire your selflessness, Jon, I’m afraid that that cannot be. My dear wife has committed high treason and I can’t allow such an offense to go--”

“Then let me lessen her burden,” Jon interrupts, and for a moment, Ramsay’s diplomatic façade falters. “Give me half of her punishment. I was the one who brought her here. You wouldn't have her now, had I not. You owe me that at least.”

“I owe nothing to a bastard traitor.”

 Sansa feels she has swallowed her tongue. The room around them has gone deathly still.

“It is not her who is to blame,” Jon begins again, carefully now. “It was not her choice to be a part of this war. She has taken no side in it.”

“She seemed quite decided when we met yesterday. What was it you said, dear?” His eyes fall fondly upon her. “Oh yes: ‘you’re going to die tomorrow, Lord Bolton.'”

The room bristles around her and Jon rushes to be heard over the scandalized murmurs.

“I forced her to come here, Ramsay. You know it. She would have run. It was my choice to fight. She advised against it and I made her stay.”

“Is that so?” Reluctantly, Ramsay’s eyes finally leave Sansa to regard the desperate man beside her. “Are you saying, bastard,” he pauses thoughtfully. “That whatever punishment I deem suitable for Sansa, you volunteer to take on half?”

Jon visibly takes in the implications of the question, but Sansa thinks he doesn’t think long enough because after only a brief pause, he nods.

“Yes,” he says. There is no bite in his tone, only solemn conviction.

He must have miscalculated, Sansa is sure. He can’t possibly know. He can’t possibly understand what it means to agree to this. If he did, surely he would not have volunteered himself.

A broad smile spreads on Ramsay’s face. The day has given him nothing but good fortune.

Sansa shuts her eyes. The new Lord of Winterfell doesn't need to say what the punishment is, but she knows that it's one she'll now have to bear. Her plans of throwing herself out of the tower window or impaling herself upon the first sharp object she can find are swept away. Jon, who had not died nobly in battle but lived and is here now, has ruined everything. Doubtlessly, this is what Ramsay had intended. This is why the cunning fiend had saved Jon from execution after the battle was won. Now, she will have to live. Now, she will have to survive, for Jon.

Ramsay is laughing, his boyish eyes on Jon like the man had made a very good joke.

“Well this will be very interesting. Very well, Jon Snow. I will grant you your request.”

 

 

 

She has removed herself from her body. It is a challenging feat, but one made somehow easier by the scene beside her, which has capture all of her attention.

At a double-arm’s distance from her on the same large, oak table is Jon, who has not gone to any lengths at all to separate himself from his body nor from any of the awful things that are happening to it. Instead, the young man, who, like her has been stripped down to his skin, seems completely engaged in everything to which his body is being subjected.

From the start, they’ve had Sansa on her back, the better to fondle and suck at her breasts as they slump over her with their sweaty, heaving bodies. She knows that this way, they would also be able to enjoy her reactions if there were any to see. As it is, she knows she is as vacant and closed as a stone statue. Countless long nights with Ramsay trained her well in concealing herself. She’ll never give them anything.

Jon, however, is taken from behind, bent at the waist with his chest shoved down against the hard table surface. Because he is a man and is strong in body and spirit, they don’t bother taking even what little care they’ve taken with her. His bucking, snarling virility makes him a worthy conquest to them, a feral beast to break.

Still, she knows that even as a man, and even in his scuffed, battle-worn state, Jon must be among the finer conquests these men have ever seen. The soldiers who‘d been forced to split from Sansa’s line to form one in front of Jon had done so grudgingly at first, but it wasn’t long before they began to find their own enjoyment in the fetching dark looks and naked intensity of this other, unexpected war prize.

Sansa can’t pretend not to have noticed Jon’s profound appeal. Growing up as his sister had not blinded her to that. Even in his debasement, his beauty is not diminished. Instead it seems to thrive in the face of the adversity. His fair, smooth skin and thick, raven hair glisten with sweat beneath the dozens of candles overhead. The warm light casts defining shadows over well-developed muscles that seize and quake as Jon braces against every hard impact. Below the swaying dark curls are facial features both delicate and masculine. As handsome as their father was, Jon is beautiful. Among the striking features are a pair of large, somber eyes. From within their dark depths, shines an eternal resilience that has not been stomped out. Even as Jon’s body is desecrated and defiled, Sansa can still see that light glowing brightly within him.

She can’t take her eyes off of him, nor can she help the pride that swells within her chest at the sight. Despite the bleak circumstances, she is warmed by his fire.

She wants to communicate with him somehow, show him he is not suffering alone, that even as these vile men ply and pillage his body for their own base fulfillment, he is eternally loved. She longs to reach out to him, to take his hand, but knows that Ramsay will see it.

As if reading her thoughts, Jon’s eyes gravitate to hers. He’d been staring down at the table for a long time, his tussled hair shrouding his strained features, but now he is looking at Sansa. There’s pity in those lovely eyes and a heavy sorrow. Although Sansa had dreaded finding anger or futile vengeance blazing back at her from the depths of those bottomless wells, this silent apology is somehow much worse.

She’s careful not to convey much to him—on her back, her reactions are much more visible to prying eyes and she wouldn’t risk allowing anyone else the satisfaction of thinking they’ve stirred something in her. Still, she hopes that she has communicated a strength to him that will ease his concerns for her. It’s himself he needs to worry about. She has seen the worst of Ramsay and can endure it. When this nightmare is all over, _she_ at least will be left whole. Jon’s future, however, is not so certain. She needs him to survive. She needs him to get through this.

Their shared moment is interrupted when Jon is flipped roughly onto his back. The man who has stepped up to take his turn with Jon seems intent on treating him to the same rough tweaking and fondling as Sansa.

From then on, the men keep Jon on his back, determined to wholly exploit the new vantage point. Jon’s full pectorals are squeezed with greedy hands and his protruding nipples are sucked into eager mouths. Here too, in these seemingly intimate acts, the soldiers are violently rough with him, dragging their teeth and fingernails across him. They seem to revel in his warrior’s fortitude and unload onto him all the things that their meager chivalry would not allow them to inflict on a woman. Jon’s ragged voice breaks unwillingly into surprised gasps and choked sobs at the new assault.

She can see, as they all surely do, that he is not accustomed to such handling, by neither man nor woman. Wildling lover or not, Jon has never known such abrasiveness on his naked skin.

Prior to this day, both he and Sansa had each only bedded one other partner. However, their experiences could not have been more different. While Jon’s sweet unions had been rooted in a deep sense of mutual trust and affection, Sansa’s had been poisoned by power, degradation, and unwillingness.

Still, as nightmarish as Sansa’s sexual experiences had been, she can't deny that they’ve made her better equipped to handle this new and horrific trial. Here, Jon is as good as a virgin, and Sansa the seasoned master. She is thankful for her time with Ramsay, if only for the tools it gave her to better handle lesser horrors. These men can damage her no more than what has already been inflicted by a foe far more monstrous.

The same cannot be said for Jon. Where Sansa has a thickened shield, Jon is fully exposed to the ravenous elements that claw and tear away at his vulnerable flesh. 

Again she fights the urge to reach out to him. He needs to know that he will survive this, that it is only his body that they invade, not his mind.

It is a new and resounding defeat when Sansa notices that Jon’s struggle has captured Ramsay’s attention as well.

She has occasionally looked over to where her husband sits perched upon his stolen throne. It is only to show him that she is unmoved by his meaningless game, to show him that she is stronger and that no matter how he may try to degrade her, hurt her, humiliate her, he will never own her. Usually, she’ll find the heir to House Bolton already watching her, drinking in her debasement with wild contentment.  More and more, however, when Sansa glances over, she notices that Ramsay’s focus has drifted to the other side of the table, a shimmer of mild amusement in his icy gaze.

Now, as she chances another look, she confirms that once again, Ramsay’s attention has been captured by Jon’s plight, but instead of vague interest upon that impish face, Sansa sees something far worse.

Before the men had flipped him onto his back, Jon had attempted to meet Ramsay’s stare head-on with his own unwavering fervor. However, the brutality with which his body was invaded, along with the course, incessant groping, had overwhelmed and divided his focus. Before long, Jon was staring down at the table, fighting and failing to conceal the flush overtaking his face and the yelps escaping his throat. So, with Jon's face downturned, only Sansa has noticed how the haughtiness and triumph in Ramsay’s gaze had mutated into a mild interest, and that to hungry appraisal.

Something twists in her gut.

She’s never known Ramsay to take a boy to his bed, willing or not. And while she’s aware that Jon isn’t just some common boy whore, she’s certain that it isn’t simply carnal lust she sees shining in Ramsay’s gaze.

She turns desperately to Jon beside her.

She wants to tell him to stop fighting, that Ramsay will lose interest if he will only go limp and silent. But Jon doesn’t understand nor even seem to notice what his vitality has attracted. How could he? He hasn’t been subjected to the tortures and mind games the likes of what Sansa had at the hands of the imaginative Bolton bastard. Jon hasn’t learned the importance of guarding his heart and removing himself from the trivialities of his body’s suffering. He doesn’t know how to smother that beautiful light inside of him.

No, he just keeps fighting. He keeps carrying his honor and devastation on his shoulders like a giant boulder, and instead of shrugging it off to survive, he will let it crush him.  

Jon’s eyes, like those of a naïve child’s, seek out each soldier with a stubborn patience. He meets his rapists, determined to see them as brothers with principles and compassion. There’s a genuine plea in Jon’s eyes as each new man steps up to defile him. “You don’t want this,” his eyes urge. “You are a Northerner as I am. You served under Eddard Stark honorably. I know you are an honorable man still.”

Over and over again, each man ignores the silent plea beneath those damp lashes and penetrates him anyway. Each stab of their cocks inside him is like a stab to Jon’s heart.

Sansa has always seen the resemblance between Jon and their father and more and more as they've grow older. Still, she never saw Eddard Stark more than now as Jon’s shoulders strain to hold himself up on his elbows and his large, doleful eyes latched onto each new soldier, silently imploring them to see the good in themselves, and as his fists and jaw clench in an effort to keep in his cries that are as much from pain as they are from utter abandonment when once again his pleas are ignored and he is penetrated to the hilt.

She doesn’t want to look but she can’t stop. With every drift of her awareness over to Jon, she watches the tragic struggle. Jon twists and bucks as he takes each violation somehow worse than the last. Each new man that shoves between Jon’s thighs becomes a new and overwhelming defeat. While Sansa has maintained resolutely silent, Jon’s retching cries and deep grunts echo about the hall.

All of this occurs beneath Ramsay's watchful gaze.

To her further dismay, Sansa’s eyes trail down Jon’s line to another disheartening sight. The group of soldiers, who had first moaned of feeling cheated when they’d been split from Sansa’s line, had now grown voracious as they watch the scene ahead of them, each now eager to have their own turn at smearing the honor of the noble Stark bastard.

One by one, they each step up to yank his damp locks and drag their tongues up his strained neck. They rasp filthy things against his ear and laugh in his pretty face when his expression twists to silent shock. Then they fuck into him harder to see what else the boy will give them. 

And Jon feeds so obligingly into their baiting. He growls and snarls like a dire wolf trapped, his dark eyes large and glistening. How they all love that. To keep from clawing at the men raping him and risk incurring Ramsay’s wrath, Jon claws instead at the table beneath him, his arms stiff and taut with strained muscle from the effort of restraining himself.

Sansa thinks Ramsay had been smart to threaten her should any harm come to his men at Jon's hand.

After one especially spirited soldier, Jon is left boneless on the table, chest rising and falling in harsh breaths. He makes no effort at a struggle nor silent plea when the next man that takes his place between his splayed thighs.

This man has a thick golden brown beard and is familiar to Sansa somehow. By the way he stares down at Jon’s heaving, naked body, she thinks that he had chosen Jon’s line.

When Jon’s rolling, fluttering eyes finally settle on the new man above him, he goes so still that Sansa wonders if he’s finally exhausted himself. Then she watches the slow twist of a grimace on his flushed lips.

When the man sees the flaring recognition on Jon’s face, a broad grin spreads across his own handsome features. It’s clear that he'd wanted Jon to know him.

“I see they’ve found a use for you, bastard,” he says.

Jon says nothing, but Sansa can see the quickening of his breaths as the man unfastens his britches.

Wasting no time, the bearded man sheaths himself completely into Jon, who does admirably in stifling his cry at the force of it. Making a show of rolling his shoulders, the soldier gets accustomed to the feeling of Jon around him.

As he begins moving his hips, the man leans down as if to whisper something private into Jon’s ear. What he says, however, carries over the whole court.

“That little Wildling must’ve had a legendary cunt on her, to have you welcoming in a whole army of them. Putting every Northerner at risk.” He settles into a steady rhythm of abrupt thrusts and Jon makes choked sounds as he tries to stay silent. “Betraying your own people. It’s a mercy your Starks aren’t alive to see it. Imagine poor old Ned...Rob… that sour mother of his, all seeing you volunteer to take an army of cocks in your pretty arse. Must be true what they say about a bastard’s appetite.”

Now he’s cupping the swell of Jon’s pectoral like a woman’s breast and rutting his hips into him deeply. It’s a mockery of tenderness and a stark contrast to the crude carnality of the previous men, but Sansa knows that it’s all to rattle Jon.

Suddenly, the bearded man is crushing his mouth to Jon’s with the vigor to make him bleed. As Jon lies frozen in aghast horror, the soldier’s free hand begins ghosting downward. Sansa’s muted heart cries out at what he takes hold of.

“Will I be the first to expose the Stark bastard’s true colors?” He hisses against Jon’s bruised lips.

Jon immediately moves to resist the unwelcome hand between his thighs but something halts him.

Sansa looks up to the head of the throne room. The hand upon which Ramsay’s chin had been propped now hangs empty and still on the arm of the throne. The Bolton heir is so consumed in the scene unfolding below him that he is leaning forward in his seat.

Although her brother doesn’t look, Jon must know that Ramsay is watching closely because he soon replaces both of his hands on the table and does not lift them again even as the bearded man begins working his sex in his calloused grip.

Sansa can’t help thinking again how cunning Ramsay is.

For a fleeting moment, Jon’s eyes drift over to her and Sansa can see, more than ever, how this destroys him. This is a kind of surrender that he had not anticipated. The rapes, he could bear, but this is a perversion of intimacy that he had not accounted for. The despair, disgust, and shame are all naked on his face.

 _Burry it_ , she urges. _Don’t let them see._ But above the deep flush of his cheeks, Jon’s eyes scream of his anguish.

The impulse to reach for him hits her again, hard, but Jon is already turning away. A quick glance downward reveals why. In the soldier’s hand, Jon is growing thicker with each harsh tug.

This soldier who knows Jon takes more time with him than any other before him. Yet, despite his persistent ministrations, Jon is not brought to release.

The soldier doesn’t seem to mind one way or another however and is growling disgusting things into Jon’s hair as he rides his own rapturous waves.

“Until next time, bastard,” the man says as he abandons Jon’s worry-reddened appendage to slap against his heaving belly, and tucks his own back into his britches.

Jon is left looking even more harassed than before, but still Sansa sees his relief at being spared one indignity at least. Sansa too is grateful for the small mercy.

 

 

The night drags on.

Jon’s flame is ever enduring. Although his ceaseless fire does nothing to abate Ramsay’s growing fascination, it is nonetheless a comfort to Sansa. Beaten, though Jon may be, he is not broken.

Still, the sideways glances that he throws her direction when he thinks she isn’t aware are beginning to concern her. It is now more for him than for her rapists that she withdraws within herself. She can’t have Jon seeing even a hint of her pain. She fears, however, that the vacancy in her face and body have registered poorly on the distressed man. While she understands the responsibility he feels and knows that there’s nothing she can communicate to him that will lessen that burden, she tries to appear strong for him. She can give him that at least.

The glances become more fervent however, and Sansa is beginning to wonder if Jon is planning something.

Then it happens.

Some time after the bearded man, a soldier approaches Jon with his weapon still tied to his waist. Jon is quick, as if he’d been waiting all night for the exact opportunity.

As worn as she knows he is, Jon still pulls the long sword from the unwitting soldier’s belt as sure as if the past few hours hadn’t happened. In an instant, the formerly armed soldier’s insides are spilling out onto the stones and Jon is trying not to slip on them as he scrambles off of the table.

With the sword extended out in front of him, Jon dives for the men in Sansa’s line. The soldier at the head of if had witnessed first-hand what had happened to the man at the head of Jon’s line and, not wanting to suffer the same fate, had leapt away from Sansa long before Jon could reach him.

Now Jon waves the sword broadly at the men around the table, more to threaten than to maim. It is an effective tactic; each man’s eyes are fixed on the weapon as they give him a wide berth. Sansa does notice, however, that a few eyes have drifted downward. She follows their wandering attention along the luminous, exposed flesh and her breath catches.

As the wife of Ramsay, she was not to have even a drop of seed spilt inside of her, and Ramsay had ordered, upon penalty of flaying, that all the men pull out before their release. No such order had been given for Jon and as a result, generous globs of whitish ooze now bubble and glide downward from the apex of his legs. Sansa knows that anyone who looks will see the thick globules of creamy fluid descending the pale, muscled thighs, but prays that no one else is close enough to notice the slight trembling of those thighs.

There’s so much semen. It’s endless. She can see that not one of the men had spared Jon the insult.

The hall is silent but for Jon’s labored breaths and snarling.

This is not a thought-out plan, she thinks. Although all of the men had given up their weapons at the start, Jon is vastly outnumbered and Sansa suspects that it’s only out of shock that the soldiers have not yet charged them. Certainly, her own surprise has her nailed to the table.

A large sword though it is, its considerable weight does not appear to flag Jon’s arm even slightly. He holds the weapon steady and straight in front of him, pointing it around the room. Sansa would think him completely refreshed were it not for the sideways glimpse of wild terror she catches in his wide eyes that dart around the room. She can’t help thinking again that this is not like him, that this is not well-calculated.

It’s with a soft gasp that Sansa becomes aware of the cool metal on her neck.

“Drop the sword, Jon,” comes Ramsay’s even voice from very near behind her.

Jon swirls around and upon seeing the dagger that Ramsay has pressed to his sister’s neck, he lets the sword fall to his side.

What had he expected? While Sansa had laid still and taken the repeated assaults like an empty vessel, Jon had fought himself to exhaustion. Had he made himself delirious with the relentless efforts?

The next moment, two men are stepping out from the crowd to restrain Jon while another man snatches the sword from his limp hand.

Jon isn’t fighting now and Sansa has an awful sinking feeling in her gut.

“You are very lucky, Sansa.” Ramsay says, and she feels the metal leave her neck as well as the first tears beginning in her eyes. “It appears that your dear brother has volunteered to relieve the remainder of the men.”

Jon’s arms hang lifelessly at his sides and his face is hollow and unreadable. Whatever fervor had momentarily possessed him is gone now and Jon is left hunched and swaying as he lets the men shove him back toward the table.

Sansa hardly notices as she is pulled off of the table and away from the center of the room. She can look nowhere but at Jon, who is still neither fighting nor objecting. As someone places a large quilt around her shoulders, Sansa watches Jon quietly take his place at the middle of the table. He’s staring down between his hands, which are flattened on the wood. The army of men file in behind him, more raucous and enlivened than before.

He won’t fight again, she knows; this is just what he’d intended.

Now Sansa is screaming for Jon and thrashing as they drag her away. As her vision goes blurry with the tears, she sees her would-be rapist stepping up to the head of the line. Now, instead of _her_ waist he's grabbing roughly with both hands, it's Jon’s.

As the man shoves into him, Jon gives a broken cry and his dark eyes drift upward to Sansa's. In that brief moment, she see a command in his eyes, a steely sense of purpose,  and something else she thinks looks strangely like... an apology. She doesn’t want it.

_Senseless._

He doesn’t understand that Sansa is already done. There is nothing they can do to her. He is sacrificing himself for nothing-- to save her a little shame, that’s all. Ramsay will dream up more ways to hurt her. This is only a small portion of what she has in store for her.

_Stupid._

“Don’t fret, wife. We won’t pull you far from dear brother. You can watch him from here.” Ramsay presents her the vacant seat beside his.

Sansa does not curb her disgust as she regards him, but accepts the proffered seat.

If Ramsay knows how he has played directly into Jon's plan, he appears as contented in obliging the man as when Jon had requested to take part in the demonstration. This is surely the easiest prey Ramsay has yet trapped. At this rate, Jon will be walking himself to the flaying slab before the day is out. 

From the head table, they have a high view of the entire Great Hall.

When Jon finally looks up and notices that Sansa has not been escorted from the room, his face goes deathly pale.

Beside her, Ramsay’s smile broadens and she can feel the haughty accomplishment radiating off of him.

The look she imparts on Jon is one she hopes will stave off his shame.

 _Not me,_ she implores him. _Never me._

She will not allow him to suffer anymore humiliation on her behalf. Let him instead find comfort in her presence. Let him tie himself to her like a ship to moor. Let him look to her and know that he can take shelter in her eyes when there is only malice and misery around him.

When Jon seems to accept that the disgust in her face is not for him, Sansa lets her eyes drift away momentarily to survey the room. Scanning the line of soldiers, her heart sinks when she can’t find the end of it.

 _Let this end soon_ , she prays. _Let him faint before the end. Let him lose consciousness._

But Jon lasts longer than perhaps even Ramsay had intended.

In his front-row seat, the Lord of Winterfell stares openly at Jon. Although he keeps his fox’s smile hidden from the public, an enrapt gleam has become a permanent fixture in his eyes. For his part, Jon fights to return the stare for as long as he can.

The men all take him from behind now, and quickly. It seems that the clotting entrails splayed across the floor beneath them as well as the dead body from whence they'd spilt, have subdued the amorous appetites in most of the soldiers.

Sansa is glad of that at least.

They shove into Jon dutifully and seem to stay only as long as it takes to find their release, taking no more pleasure in trying to rouse or even fondle him. She thinks she even saw a few men sneak out of line, careful to avoid Ramsay’s detection.

The line is quickly shortening but the end cannot come soon enough.

Sansa grips the thick quilt around her anxiously as she eyes Jon’s depleted form.

The naked man is still leaning heavily over the table. His hands have not lifted once from their spots though his arms tremble to keep him upright. She’s certain that his legs have all but given out and that Jon’s arms and unshakable will are now the only things keeping him from collapsing.

His shouts have quieted as well. Only a flutter of eyelashes, a forward sway, and a jerk to right himself reveal when a new soldier has entered him.  

Otherwise, Jon’s attention is focused wholly on the man atop the throne.

 

 

When Jon finally does pass out, his eyes rolling back and upper body buckling onto the wooden table top, Ramsay makes no move to have him roused.

Sansa seizes forward in her seat, staring at the motionless body.

When Ramsay still makes no move, she realizes that the game is still going. At least Jon will not have to be awake to endure any more of it.

When the last man finishes, the hall is filled with swaying, sleep-deprived bodies, leaning on walls and huddling in corners. It feels as though a day has gone by since the horrific ordeal begun and it now seems as much of a punishment to the victims as it does to those carrying it out.

Finally, as the final man hobbles off, tucking himself back into his britches and scanning the hall for an empty wall to lean against, Ramsay stands.

Sansa’s eyes are trained to the gentle expanding and contracting of Jon’s rib cage.

_He lives. He lives._

Clapping his hands together, Ramsay addresses the room.

“Well then. This concludes the trial of the traitor Stark descendants. The penance has been paid. Sansa, my lady,” he turns brusquely to Sansa, who is a shell in a queen’s throne. “Because your brother has … _taken--_ ” he settles on the word with some decided awkwardness-- “Your punishment in your place, you are hereby pardoned.” He pivots again to face the room. “To my valiant warriors, the Karstarks, the Umbers, the--”

“Jon.”

Ramsay inclines a raised brow in her direction. She hadn’t realized she’d said it aloud.

“What happens to Jon,” she trudges on. Her own voice sounds foreign and flat to her ears.

As if she hadn’t spoken at all, Ramsay turns back to the crowded room filled with his groggy subjects.

“You have all fought bravely and proven your loyalty to me one hundred times over on this day, and for that I am deeply grateful. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this gift as a token of my humblest gratitude. Now, go home to your families. Feast and drink well to this historic victory.”

 

 

When the room begins slowly clearing out of its weary inhabitants, Ramsay signals to his flanking guards. The two heavily armored men go forward and drag Jon’s lifeless body from the table.

There is a pool of semen at Jon’s twisted feet to rival the blood from the skewered soldier

Hoisting him upright by his arms, they bring him forward.

Sansa scans his sagging head and heavy limbs with a caged hysteria. An eternity passes before Ramsay finally turns to her with an expectant smile and indicates with an extended hand that she is permitted to go to him.

Without pause, she leaps up, almost leaving the thick quilt behind her in her haste. When she reaches him, her hands are on his face, prodding and stroking the clammy skin. She brushes the hair from his face and presses her palm to his forehead as if to check for a fever.

No seemingly kind gesture from Ramsay has ever preceded anything but suffering, but Sansa cannot think of that now as she cradles Jon’s head, slowly rousing him.

“Well done, Jon Snow.” Ramsay says when Jon is conscious enough to register Sansa in front of him.

He grasps for her hand and allows her to press their heads together. Although he still uses the guards to stand, he tries to lean on Sansa as much as his captors will allow.

“Have a bath drawn for them,” Ramsay says to the guards. “Sansa, you will help clean him. When they’re done, have them both taken to Maester Wolkan.”

At this, Sansa turns to him. The former Snow is bursting at the seams with some secret joy.

“Sansa, I’ve decided to allow Jon to live here on the condition that he is your responsibility.”

He speaks as if he is gifting her with a new dog, and Sansa’s gut churns.

“Understand that I’m holding you entirely responsible for everything he does out of turn. If he is disobedient, tries to escape, or tries to aid you in escaping, it is you who will be punished.”

Sansa grips Jon’s hand tighter and feels his breath quicken on her cheek.

“And should you meet some untimely death, Sansa. It is Jon who will be held responsible, but he won’t be granted the mercy of a quick end.”

Clenching her jaw, Sansa turns to her brother. Jon is glowering at Ramsay now with more hatred than he’d shown through the entire ordeal.

“You understand, Sansa.” Ramsay says, but his eyes never leave Jon.

Only when the guards are leading them away, does Ramsay’s relinquish his heavy gaze. Sansa realizes belatedly that he’d been watching Jon the entire time, even when addressing the guards.

She knows Ramsay well enough to know there’s always something else slithering beneath his words.

The tyrant had framed the arrangement like a punishment for Sansa, but really this had become about Jon. Ramsay knows that Jon will never do anything that might endanger her—he’d proven that here. Now Ramsay will use that to control him. Making Sansa Jon’s sole custodian was all he’d needed to do to ensure that Jon was kept under his thumb.

If only Jon could see how they’re being manipulated. Even if she tries to tell him, she knows he won’t listen. And even if Ramsay’s true motives aren’t lost on him, Jon would do nothing to stop it. He won’t accept that there’s nothing Ramsay can do to her anymore, and that she would rather Jon fight for himself than kneel to protect her.

This is how Ramsay will have Jon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is entirely based on the show (I'm sure you've noticed). So, whatever age the actors appear, that's how old they are, and all character traits are taken purely from their performances. Sorry! Haven't read the books! But I do research little details for background when necessary.
> 
> I'm thinking of building this into a series of smutty scenes featuring these three, mainly Ramsay and Jon. As Ramsay's fascination with Jon grows, he'll think up new and twisted ways to mess with him. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! Bleak, I know, but when it comes to Ramsay, it writes itself. Let me know what you think and if you'd like more!


	2. Washroom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ramsay joins them in the washroom.

Immediately following their punishment in the Great Hall, Sansa and Jon had been sent to the washroom, then to the maester’s chambers to rest. At the time, this had come as a surprise to Sansa. The idea that Ramsay, the same man who’d sentenced them to be raped by every man in his army while he watched from his throne, would then send them to have their wounds dressed by the maester, was incongruous to her. Then she’d thought a bit more about it, and it began to make sense.

Certainly, Ramsay would want them mended and fresh. All the better for them to take whatever awful thing he dreamt up next for them.

The robed man they’d met in the Maester’s Turret was not the one she'd grown up with. Maester Lewin, of course, had died years ago. This new maester, Maester Wolkan, had been brought over from the Dreadfort. While that information alone might have been enough for her to want the man nowhere near her brother, the maester's clinical attentiveness and gentle hands had soon eased her worries—for the most part; she wouldn’t make the mistake of confusing his proficiency for loyalty. To be safe, she resolved to treat him like just another extension of Ramsay. In doing so, she remained reserved in his presence and hawkishly watchful when he handled Jon.

Despite her wariness, she did sleep. In fact, Sansa thinks she’s never slept deeper. Jon, who’d needed the rest even more than she had, was like a dead man beside her the moment that Maester Wolkan had instructed him to lie down. It had been for the best; unconscious, Jon didn’t have to endure the maester’s prodding as he applied the ointment to his most tender regions.

Jon had slept all through the following day, awoken only briefly by Sansa and Maester Wolkan to receive his meals, which he ate silently and mechanically sitting up in his cot.

She'd thought he would sleep through the next day as well, and both she and Maester Wolkan were content to let him, but the guards arrive near mid-day to take them back to the washroom, where a new bath has been prepared for them.

It’s the same washroom they’d used two days prior and like then, she’s certain that when the two guardsmen leave, they don’t go far. If she peeks out of the thick wooden door, she’s sure to find them standing watch on the other side of it. Ramsay wouldn’t be so careless as to leave his new war prizes unsupervised so soon after winning them. 

Sansa lets Jon go first, mostly because she wants him to sit down.

Despite his near two-day rest, he’d walked—or hobbled rather—with visible discomfort on their trek back to the Great Keep, and had shaken his head stiffly when she’d silently offered her arm to him.  She knows it wasn't for pride that he’d refused her, but to stave off her worries. He didn’t know that she’d already seen the depths of the soldiers’ brutality as he'd lain naked and unconscious on the maester’s slab.

As he carefully removes his clothes, Sansa can see that the marks on his form are more defined now than two days ago when they’d only been a smattering of worry-reddened blotches and scrapes. Now, they’ve begun blossoming into full, bluish bruises that are mostly small, but copious and spread out over broad regions.

As she helps him lower himself into the warm water, she eyes some of the larger bruises on his hips and thighs. She’s sure that the ones on either side of his hips are from where the men had gripped him as they took him. She can only assume that the ones on the front of his thighs are from getting bodily rammed into the table repeatedly when they’d had him from behind. The marks look painful and imposing now, but she knows from experience that they’ll only get worse before lessening.

Surprisingly, those marks, however jarring their implication, don't rattle her as much as some of the more subtle ones that decorate his form. The marks that truly turn Sansa’s stomach and set her blood boiling are those on his face.

Jon’s cheeks look more scalded than bruised from where he’d been slapped so many times. Along his jaw are the distinct imprints left from digging fingers where the men had gripped him to turn his head how they’d wanted it. Beneath his beard, the marks aren’t terribly noticeable at least, but still stand as proof of the egregious disrespect Jon had endured at the soldiers’ hands. Worst of all is the sight of a small red cut amid a purpling bruise on his swollen lower lip. From the bearded man, she’s sure.

The familiar soldier with the thick golden brown beard and vulgar tongue had made sport of playing with Jon and had gone so far as to entrap him in what had been a crushing insult of a kiss. Now the mark from the malicious act stands out on Jon’s face as a symbol to the world, temporary though no less glaring, of what the man had stolen from him. Furthermore, it’s dull, throbbing ache surely serves as a constant reminder to Jon of how the man had besmeared him.

 _Among all the other reminders_ , she thinks, and her chest aches.

In the wooden tub, Jon is carefully washing himself with a cloth. Sansa doesn’t assist him now as she had the last time, but leans against the wall, near enough should Jon call upon her. He doesn’t dunk himself fully (probably because he’s too sore for such a maneuver), but instead cups water in his hands and pours it over himself.

As she watches, she can’t help thinking how childlike he looks, sitting there in the large tub with the water up to his middle, dousing himself with small handfuls of water. She’d thought something similar nearly two days earlier in this very washroom, when she’d scolded him as if he truly were a child.

 

 

So soon after the horrific events in the Great Hall, Jon had been nothing but a sunken, shell of a man clinging as much to his consciousness as he did to the rim of the tub to keep himself upright.

As soon as the guards had left, she’d turned on her brother, accusing him of madness for what he’d brought on himself. Jon responded, in his ragged voice, by reminding her of the promise he’d made to keep her safe and that she is all he has left now. This had struck her as unfair and she grew further incensed; Wasn’t Jon now all she had left as well? What if she didn’t want anything happening to him either?

Both their voices rose and echoed off the stone walls of the small washroom, though Jon’s had been considerably weaker in his state. The spat had ended in a war of wills encapsulated in a hard stare. It was Sansa who finally broke it. The sight of Jon there, sunken in the large tub, with blood-shot eyes and only his force of will keeping him from passing out again, had been enough for her to let the matter lie, for the time being at least. At the time, he’d looked somehow even more fragile than he does now, as beaten and bruised as he is, and the sight combined with the still-fresh memory of what he’d just endured, had planted seeds of guilt in her gut so large that she no longer wanted to shout at him.

Instead, she crossed the room to kneel at his side.

“Jon, you don’t need to do this,” she said, gently then, looking directly into his heavy-lidded eyes. “I’m not asking you to do this for me.”

“And I’m not doin’ it ‘cause you asked,” Jon had said, in his low, broken voice. And the matter was put to rest.

 

 

She’d thought then and thinks now, as she watches Jon scrubbing at his face in the tub, that this swell of maternal protectiveness she feels for her last living kin will very quickly become home to her. At all costs, she cannot let Ramsay do to Jon what he’d done to Theon, what he’d done to her.

And as if the mere thought had summoned the man, Lord Bolton comes sauntering into the washroom.

Jon, who’d just doused his face with water, wipes his eyes clear with his knuckles to see who’d just walked in on them. When he sees that it’s Ramsay, there's a palpable shift in him. Sansa almost expects to hear a genuine growl from the wolfish way Jon’s eyes follow the intruder.

“Good morning,” Ramsay says brightly and grabs Sansa’s face with both hands to plant a kiss on her lips. “My beautiful wife.”

His beaming countenance does not falter as he regards Jon in the tub.

“My apologies. I’d hoped to check on you both sooner, but was detained after the _festivities_ ,” he allows a pricking pause on the word. “I’ve been terribly remiss in my duties as host, I’m afraid. At any rate, I’m here now. Don’t let me interrupt.”

Folding his arms across his chest, he regards Sansa.

The chilly silence extends until she realizes what he’s waiting for her to do, for what he’s insinuating that he’d intruded upon.

 _Your responsibility,_ the words echo from a dark place in her mind.

Slowly, she moves toward the bath tub.

 

 

 

Sansa would say that, until very recently, she and Jon had never been the most affectionate of siblings. In fact, it was always Jon and Arya who’d seemed inseparable growing up. It wasn’t until their reunion at Castle Black that Sana had come to see how inexorably valuable Jon was to her. She might even say that that had marked the true beginning of their relationship.

Still, despite their long estrangement, there are few extraneous circumstances in which the idea of touching Jon’s bare skin would evoke revulsion in her. Sansa had helped bathe him after the events in the Great Hall when he’d been on the verge of passing out, and it hadn’t felt strained nor misguided then. Admittedly, Jon might have been incapable of completing the task on his own at the time, so she'd felt a certain responsibility. Also, having been under the influence of a violent need to cleanse him of the soldiers’ filth, she'd been compelled to breach the normal physical boundaries of their sibling-hood. Still, she would do it again, as he would her, she's certain. Afterall, who alive would have been better suited for the task than she? Who now answers for Jon, if not Sansa?

Yet, now, beneath Ramsay’s invasive gaze, the almost parental act is being tainted. She feels that every touch and brush of her hands over Jon’s naked form is being dissected and twisted. She wants to recoil from his skin now, a reaction to him she never expected to have.  

There’s an eerie prickling down her spine as she hears the sounds of Ramsay's footsteps circling them. Scoping out the optimum viewing vantage point, she expects. She doesn’t look up and neither does Jon, who hasn’t moved since the other man entered the room but only stares down at the water.

Jon had already done most of the washing himself, and had almost been finished when Ramsay had walked in. So, what Sansa is doing now is all for show, she knows, all so this wretched beast can sate himself on his new, obscene fascination with them.

Determined not to feed into Ramsay’s sordid fantasy, Sansa proceeds to rinse her brother’s body with a clinical terseness. After a short time, she wrings out the wash cloth, hangs it over the rim of the bath, and sets her hands in her lap to indicate that she’s finished.

“Now, Sansa,” Ramsay drawls, maintaining his steady pace around them. “You must be thorough. As our ward, Jon must be presentable.”

Reluctantly, she reaches for the cloth again and applies it to Jon’s chest, which she’d intentionally overlooked before; the scrapes there are among the worst and she’d feared she might chafe the already agitated skin.  Also, his nipples look swollen and raw, and from the way she’d seen Jon gingerly rinsing the area earlier, she guesses that they’re still very tender from the soldiers’ liberal fondling.

She tries to be mindful of her pressure as she begins rubbing small circles over the area. When the cloth grazes the inflamed nubs, Jon’s reaction is subtle and quick, but Sansa doesn’t miss it.

 _Only a little more, Jon_.

After what she feels is a sufficient passage of time, Sansa begins to pull away again, but stops when Ramsay speaks.

“Lower,” he says. The brief instruction leaves little room for misinterpretation.

Locking her jaw, she guides the rag downward from the smattering of bruises and bite marks that cover Jon’s chest to the smooth area above his navel.

Offering what little help he can, Jon leans back slightly to give her access.

After another brief period, Sansa finishes with that area. She begins to wring out the cloth again, but Ramsay says, “Lower, dear.”

He has come to a stop directly behind her and his voice has shed its already thin veil of cordiality. Evidently, he’s done dancing around what they both know he’s alluding to.

Sansa doesn’t turn to look at him but focuses on controlling her breathing. She can’t show him how this affects her. She must maintain her walls.

Jon doesn’t look up either, but Sansa can see beneath his dark lashes his brown irises drifting in her direction.

Slowly, she leans forward again and applies the cloth to Jon’s front. Exhaling, she lets it glide downward until it breaks the water’s surface.

There, she pauses, daring to think it might be enough. Then suddenly, she feels the harsh jut of Ramsay’s knee into the center of her back, pushing her forward over the brim of the tub, and driving her arm downward against Jon’s body.

Instantly, her walls crumble. She feels sick. Before she can think, she's bracing herself with both hands clasped over the brim of the tub and has dropped the cloth.

Her vision is hazy with panic and her head is pounding, but above her rushing thoughts, she hears a cool and serene voice.

“That’s alright, Sansa,” the voice says, very near her ear. “I’ll help you.”

She feels herself being nudged aside none-too-gently and does nothing to stop it. It’s only a small shove but she’s tumbling over onto the stone floor. Her vision is still swimming as she catches herself on her hands. The thought of what she’d almost just done to her brother is a garbled, incomprehensible thing that flashes in her mind, and when she dwells on it, causes bile to rise in her stomach. She shuts out the thought.

She hadn’t done it. _She hadn’t_. Ramsay hadn’t been able to make her.

When she turns around, her brief moment of relief is taken, so too is her seat next to the tub. While she may have been saved from violating Jon, Jon, it seems, is not.

Atop the stool beside the large wooden bath, Ramsay sits, rolling up his sleeves.

“Let’s see, where did it go?” He hums.

“Ramsay, no! I’ll—“ Sansa seizes forward when Ramsay’s hand promptly plunges into the bath water.

The fragile restraint that Jon had managed to maintain since Ramsay first entered the washroom is all at once shattered as the other man dives into his personal space. Jon’s bruised mouth is agape as he hones in with wide eyes on the arm that’s suddenly fishing around between his thighs.

“Don’t worry, Sansa,” Ramsay says. “I’ll get it. Keep your legs open, Jon,” he adds when Jon instinctively tries to clamp them together. "I'm sure you'll be right at home in the position."

Slowly and with what appears to be considerable mental strain, Jon spreads his legs again to allow Ramsay’s arm to continue rummaging for the rag between them. His large, mortified eyes drift over to Sansa.

Sansa, unprepared herself for the alarming turn of events, has nothing to offer him, and only looks on from the floor in a similar state of terror.

Jon’s visceral discomfort is not lost on Ramsay, who keeps up his “search” for a few torturous moments longer. He makes idle, curious sounds as he pats around between Jon’s legs for the rag, which Sansa knows could not have gone far. She also notes that while Jon is fully occupied trying with all of his might to ignore the arm groping around within his intimate zone, Ramsay has not taken his eyes off of him.

It’s another game then, she thinks, feeling her breath begin to even. It’s another ploy to unnerve the man who’d dared dispute his rule. Ramsay, who she feels certain has never taken a boy to his bed, has no real interest in touching Jon so intimately, but only in watching him squirm.

But when she hears Jon’s sudden startled yelp, she is less certain.

There’s a burst of water as Jon seizes Ramsay’s arm to wrench it out from between his thighs, but stops when he meets Ramsay's eyes.

At first, Jon only snarls at the look Ramsay gives him, but soon retracts his teeth, then slowly, reluctantly his grip on the arm as well.

Sansa knows well what it is to be on the receiving end of such a look from Ramsay Bolton, to have that raw madness turned wholly upon her. Enough times, she’d doubted the look and the promises within it, then learned first-hand the hard limit to Ramsay’s leniency, as well as the extent of his imagination.

With Jon’s deference, the madness seems to recede again behind the icy irises, at least for the time being, and Ramsay resumes his hunt.

Sansa can guess easily which promise Jon had seen flashing in Ramsay’s wild eyes in that brief moment. Although the events in the Great Hall seems only a feverish hallucination now, she remembers well the words Ramsay had imparted on them just before they’d been lead away from the room and the soiled remnants of what had occurred there.

_“Understand that I’m holding you completely responsible, Sansa, for everything he does out of turn. If he is disobedient, tries to escape, or tries to aid you in escaping, it is you who will be punished.”_

So, instead of fighting for his honor, Jon sits and takes the cruel toying from the man who now owns him so completely that he can make light of such private, personal contact. This he endures, for Sansa.

After a few more exaggerated arcs of Ramsay’s submerged arm, along with a few clipped grunts from Jon, Ramsay extracts his hand.

“Ah,” he says at last, lifting the soaked rag from the water. “Here it is.”

Although Jon’s face is still glowing from the soldiers’ rough treatment two days earlier, it’s a different kind of redness that now claims his cheeks. Sullenly, he stares down at the water and doesn’t look at Sansa.

Thoughtless of Jon’s misery, Ramsay begins smoothing the rag over his hunched form, picking up where Sansa had left off. He revisits places she’d washed but goes further, reaching areas on Jon that she’d avoided under her lord’s prying eyes. He washes his ears, beneath his arms, he even lifts his hair to get behind his neck. When he slides the cloth down Jon’s chest, he doesn’t use Sansa’s caution but scrubs hard as if to wipe away Jon’s bruises.

Jon’s jaw is clenched shut but the pain is visible on his strained features. When Ramsay sweeps across a swollen nipple, however, he audibly gasps.

Sansa feels helpless as she looks on.

Would she be like Theon now? Would she be forced to play the spectator as Ramsay plies and pilfers Jon of all he has left? Worse still, will she be called upon to _assist_ in his ruination? She’d almost done it here already. She can’t bear the thought of it going any further.

Lost in her nightmarish premonitions, she doesn’t immediately realize that Ramsay is speaking to her.

“Sansa,” he says again, contracted pupils like pin needles on her. “Did you not hear me?”

She looks at Jon, who stares back at her with a hunted expression.

“I said,” Ramsay recounts coolly. “There is room enough in here for the both of you.”

She swallows.

Earlier, when she’d refused to touch Jon intimately, Ramsay had done it for her. If she refuses this, what will he do then?

Ramsay’s gaze hardens and Sansa remembers her walls. With her jaw set, she rises to her feet and begins removing her clothes.

Ramsay doesn’t conceal the appraisal in his roaming gaze.

Loathing her husband with her eyes, Sansa steps into the bath, which is indeed large enough for her and Jon to sit facing one another with their legs intermingled.

“There now,” Ramsay beams, taking in the sight of them both. “Brother and sister bathing together. Isn’t this tender? And this way we won’t have to send for more water.”

Her eyes drift over to Jon, who is panting slightly and visibly uneasy. His taut muscles don’t settle even when Ramsay’s hands finally leave him.

Ramsay scoots his stool toward Sansa and settles, not beside her, but behind her, as if to keep Jon in full view while he tends to her.

With a small basin, Ramsay douses her with water. As she feels his fingers running through her wet hair, she tries to hide her disgust from her brother, who is watching them closely. The wary stillness of him reminds her of a scouting wolf, waiting out his prey.

When Ramsay’s hand glides over her shoulder to her breast, Sansa sees a flash of teeth.

If Ramsay notices the mounting tension on the other side of the tub, he says nothing, but continues caressing Sansa with increasing familiarity.

As tightly wound as Jon is, Sansa is loose and composed.  Her arms rest limply atop the tub’s rim and she doesn’t move. Even as Ramsay’s hand dives between her thighs, she effects nothing.

“The soldiers were not kind, were they, dear,” He says by her ear as he invades her.

His rough prodding is more uncomfortable than painful, but he’ll get nothing from her regardless.

“As kind as expected, my lord,” she says evenly. The response is not outright insolence. Still, it fails to quench Ramsay’s sordid thirsts, which is its own form of insolence, she supposes.

When neither his fingers nor his words succeed in provoking the desired reaction from her, Ramsay begins to pull away.

It is not with relief that Sansa realizes he’s only moving to the other side of the bath again. 

“Does it make you sentimental, being here with Jon?” Ramsay asks her, while pouring water over the back of Jon’s head to wet his hair. “Last time he was in Winterfell, he was only a young man, wasn't he? Grown quite considerably since then, hasn't he?”  

Sansa knows that speaking _about_ Jon instead of directly addressing him is a way for Ramsay to further degrade the man who’d tried to dethrone him. The message is further serviced by his hands, which continue to roam Jon’s naked form as he speaks, as if Jon's body is nothing more than property to be explored and repositioned at will. Perhaps Ramsay feels that this will earn him the reaction from Jon that Sansa would not give him. Considering the ball of nerves that her brother embodies at the moment, she thinks he may find some success.

 _You must outlast this_ , she thinks, and tries to meet his eyes but they appear glazed over and distant.

“Did you two bathe this way as children, Sansa?” Ramsay continues his prodding.

It’s almost with affection that he brushes Jon’s curls aside to glide the cloth over the exposed and tense muscles at the base of his neck. It is Sansa who flinches when Ramsay forces Jon's head to tilt for better access

“No,” Ramsay answers himself after a pause. “I suppose Jon wouldn’t have been allowed to use the same washrooms as you.” He goes still for a moment as if suddenly struck by something. “I heard that they used to send him out to the stables to bathe. Is that true, bastard?”

Only a slight tightening of Jon’s lips reveal that Ramsay’s words have registered, while Sansa’s fists tighten over the rim of the tub.

“Or was it, with the pigs?”

Although Jon may be accustomed to such taunts and worse, Sansa is far from it. Stark by name or not, Jon is now and has always been as much of a brother to her as Rob, Bran, and Rickon ever were, and she will clout her ears before she’ll hear a soulless snake like Ramsay speak of him as if he were nothing more than a street mongrel.

“I’m sure you would know,” she hears herself say. Both Ramsay and Jon look at her. “Having known the life of a bastard yourself, who better than you to answer such a question, Lord _Bolton?_ ” She sneers around the name as if it is a joke.

It is clear by the way the fingers in Jon’s hair halt their slow stroking motion and how the grin falls from the broad lips, that Ramsay didn't miss the slight.

“I,” he begins, very clearly, “Am Trueborn son of Roose—“

“ _Named_  Trueborn,” she corrects him. She doesn’t look at Jon but is sure that he’s imploring her with his shining eyes to be silent. Somehow, it is now Sansa who is on the short fuse, and Jon who is pining to assuage her. She continues. “But as you know, bastard blood runs deep and isn’t simply amended with the stroke of a pen. Claim whatever name you like, My Lord: Bolton, Lannister, Stark, Targaryen.” She smiles with all of her teeth. “All the North will know your true name— _Bastard_.”

Ramsay’s chest swells and Sansa steels herself for the retribution to come. And let it come, she thinks. Let him unleash his rage. Let him take his disgusting hand, whose fingers twist in Jon’s curls with such entitlement, and raise it to strike her.

She doesn’t so much as blink as she awaits him head-on.

Moments pass and the room is densely still.

The glacial ice that had momentarily claimed Ramsay’s wide-eyed stare seems now to melt away. His’s flared expression softens and his posture eases. Within moments, it’s as if Sansa had said nothing at all.

Ramsay appears to lean further over Jon as he continues swathing the cloth over his naked form, guiding it over his front again.

“Maester Wolkan says you will recover well,” he says, to Jon now.

Before either of them is able to register the words, Ramsay’s arm is submerged beneath the water again.

Jon yelps, but it’s a different sound from the one he’d made earlier when Ramsay had tauntingly grazed him while “searching” for the rag. That had been surprise and embarrassment. This is unadulterated pain.

Jon’s face twists and his muscles leap as he struggles to escape some bodily agony, the source of which Sansa can't see. He can’t go far however, because Ramsay’s other hand is still deep in his hair, and using the thick tresses to tether Jon in place.

Sansa doesn’t need to see beneath the water’s quaking surface to guess what Ramsay is doing there. It seems that from both above and below, Ramsay has a firm hold of Jon.

 “Ramsay!” Sansa rushes forward. “Ramsay, I was wrong! I was wrong! Stop!” What had she done?

“What is my name?” Ramsay asks, yanking Jon’s head backward.

“Bolton!” She screams at once. “Bolton! It’s _Bolton!”_ But as Ramsay appears to take no notice of her, she realizes that it isn’t  _her_ admonition he wants.

“What is my name, bastard,” Ramsay asks again, and the sweetness in his voice is a laughable contradiction to the violence in his hands.

In fact, Jon looks so overcome by what Ramsay is doing to him that Sansa thinks he wouldn’t be able to answer now if he'd wanted to. But then that’s the point, isn’t it.

There’s an unsettling downward shift in the position of Ramsay’s submerged arm and her suspicion is confirmed. Just as Jon begins curling his lips around the answer, he’s cut off by his own startled bark. This time both of his hands leap to seize the invading arm. Sansa notices a heightened urgency in Jon’s struggling as well. His hips jerk frantically and his yelps become stuttering sobs.

Bitterly, she realizes that if Ramsay really wanted to hurt Jon, he would go where he’s already wounded.

“Easy, Jon,” Ramsay says against his strained face. “We’re just going to get you cleaned.” He flashes her the briefest look and effectively smothers any doubts she’d had as to what his fingers are now doing to Jon beneath the concealing waters.

She fights the urge to kick him; she’s in a good position to do it but knows that Jon will be more hurt by it.

Across from her, the tormented man doesn’t so much push Ramsay’s arm away now as claw at it desperately. Ramsay surprisingly permits it, but doesn’t cease his hidden ministrations. Above the water, Jon’s legs thrash and jerk, narrowly missing Sansa as he fights to close his thighs around the arm lodged firmly between them.

“My name, Jon,” Ramsay persists.

Jon's eyes, which had been tightly shut in pain, open at last to reveal large and frantic orbs. His breaths are whining moans between desperate gulps for air.

Once more, he takes too long to answer and Ramsay does something Sansa can’t see that makes Jon’s whole body convulse again. Somehow Jon manages to swallow his cry this time.

Quickly gathering his faculties before Ramsay has another chance to interfere, Jon utters the name.

“Bolton” Comes the rushed entreaty.

_Thank the gods._

“Bolton— _Lord_ Bolton,” he sputters.

Every visible surface of Jon’s bare skin is drenched from either sweat or the scattered bathwater as he stares up at the composed man above him. His breaths pass shakily between parted lips as he still clutches Ramsay’s arm. From beneath the errant strands of his tousled hair, his soulful eyes confirm his surrender, as bitter as they are sincere.

Oh, sweet Jon, Sansa thinks, despite herself. You don’t know how beautiful you are to him now.

By the quieting of Jon’s wails and the stilling of his limbs, Sansa guesses that Ramsay has abandoned his under-water assault.  He now only appears to take stock of the man in his hold. Sansa watches as dilated blue eyes dance across the damp, slackened and hair-mussed face. In the end, Lord Bolton seems to find Jon’s acquiescence satisfactory.

Roughly, he releases his grip of Jon’s curls, now tangled and sticking out wildly. As he stands graciously from his stool, his arm, dripping wet with bathwater, slides out from between Jon’s limp thighs. With an air of finality, the Lord of Winterfell tugs his vest straight and regards Jon one last time before turning to his wife.

“I understand you’re well enough to join me for supper this evening, Sansa.” It is entirely a statement. “I look forward to seeing you in the dining hall. When you’re through here, have Jon sent to the Great Hall. There’s still a mess there that needs seeing to.” He moves to leave but stops at the door before adding, “though, I expect he’ll need to see Maester Wolkan again first. His recovery may not be as timely as the good maester had anticipated.”

With that, Ramsay leaves the room. A guard reaches in to pull the door closed behind him.

The torrents of panic which Sansa had been holding at bay through the duration of Ramsay’s visit seem now to overtake her in crashing waves.

Across from her, Jon seems to fall apart where he sits, looking suddenly boneless, evidently experiencing a similar euphoria of having just narrowly survived something traumatic.

She could scold him again for giving into Ramsay so wholly if it had not been necessary to end his own suffering. At any rate, it had been her own foolish tongue that had gotten him into it this time.

As aware as she is of her own culpability in what had happened, she will not forget that Ramsay is forever at the core of their troubles. He’d lied to her, the cat-faced scoundrel. He'd said she was the one who would be punished for Jon’s missteps, not Jon for hers. This was not how it was meant to go. The words had been hers, yet Jon was the one who’d suffered for them.

She recalls the enrapt look on Ramsay's face as he'd held the thrashing, bucking man beneath him with his arm buried between the pale, kicking thighs. Perhaps, she ventures with a simmering suspicion, Jon was meant to get hurt all along. Perhaps Ramsay was always going to hurt him, and he’d only been waiting for a reason. She wouldn’t put it past the malevolent brute. Still, her words had been quite the catalyst.

A deep guilt consumes her at the bitter memory of what it was she’d said to incur Ramsay’s wrath.

At once, she lifts her heavy head to look at Jon, who is still panting and looks as if his nearly two-day-long rest had done nothing for him.

“I didn’t mean it,” she says, her own voice sounding pathetic to her ears.

What she’d said earlier to Ramsay about his bastard blood, in a tone drenched in venom, had only been to knock the peevish grin off of his brat face. She hadn’t believed a word of it and hated each one as they’d left her mouth. She'd just been so blind with fury, she hadn't been able to stop herself. Jon must understand this. He can't believe that she would ever think of him that way.

Jon rolls his own lulling head along the back rim of the tub to look at her.

As she opens her mouth again, he raises a gentle hand. The small gesture silences her as much as does the furrow in his brow, which makes her fear that speaking pains him.

“Don’t think it,” he says at last, and although his voice is a ravaged croak, his eyes are so soft and warm that Sansa does dispense of the thought instantly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I’m writing Jon as he endures all of this mess, I keep picturing his reaction when he was ambushed and stabbed in that scene at the end of season 5. He was _so_ fragile and had this vulnerable and almost _understanding_ look on his face as they did it! My gosh, that scene is so permeating for me!
> 
> Anyway, since it was such a powerful scene and served as my muse for the first chapter, I recommend you all give it another look as a visual aid for this fic ;D 
> 
> Here’s the link to the scene below:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJUyypOUH1U
> 
> Thanks again for the wonderful encouragement on that last chapter. I wasn't sure how people would handle the brutality of it, and was so pleasantly surprised. Thank God for tags though. Anyway, let me know how you felt about the chapter and the next one will be up soon!


	3. Dining Guests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ramsay invites some unexpected guests to dine with them.

Sansa is not eating. She finds she has no appetite.

She doesn’t know the names of all the men at the table but is assured by the sidelong leers they send her from the other end and their leaning comments to one another that they were there the day in the Great Hall when Ramsay rounded up the remainder of his army to reap their spoils of war. Whether it had been with her body or Jon’s that they’d slaked their battle-whetted lust, she neither knows nor cares. She’ll see them all suffering together before she leaves this world.

“We must have you fed and healthy Sansa,” Ramsay says beside her, apparently noticing her untouched plate. “Lest you wither away and leave poor Jon by himself.” 

The words are drenched in implication. The promise he’d made to her nearly two weeks past looms darkly in her mind. Before the guards had led both Sansa and a sagging, fleetingly conscious Jon away from the courtroom, the Lord of Winterfell had imparted them with a solemn vow.

_“Oh, and Sansa. Should you fall ill or meet some other untimely end, there will be no one here to take care of Jon, and I’m afraid his welcome in Winterfell will expire.”_

That had been the final crushing blow to any hope for reprieve still lingering within her. Following the staggering loss of Winterfell, the prospect of death had seemed all too favorable to returning to the malevolent embrace of Ramsay Bolton. She’d been forced to dispense of the idea, however,  the moment she’d been shoved into the crowded Great Hall and been greeted with an army of battle-fresh soldiers and the somehow more disparaging sight of Jon kneeling at the foot of the throne.

It would be unspeakably cruel to continue harboring plans of leaving Jon, who’d already endured so much sorrow in his young life, to suffer her loss as well. And certainly not now, after what she’d witnessed in that dank and sweat-smelling courtroom over what had been a nearly two-day-long excursion. Later, however, when she’d learned Ramsay’s plans to use Jon’s devotion to Sansa to coerce his submission, the idea of ending her life had once more held promise; to die would not only end her own torment, but would relieve Jon of his inextricable responsibility to her. No longer shackled by the fear of what his actions would cost her, Jon would be free to fight for himself and possibly even escape this nightmare. She knows she could die happily with her last thoughts on Jon’s retribution.

But then Ramsay had uttered the final condition of his ownership and thus condemned them absolutely.

Ending her life to thwart any further manipulation from Ramsay would be fruitless if Jon would only be executed immediately thereafter. No, instead of ending her life and risking Jon’s, she’ll live and prolong their suffering. At least until they find some other way out of this.

She stares unblinkingly at Ramsay as she stabs her fork into a piece of meat. As she chews the first tasteless bites, she bares her teeth wolfishly at her captor. His blue eyes are unchanging as they appraise her unreserved hostility.

She’d intended to hold the gaze for as long as he did, but her attention is suddenly pulled to the door of the dining hall, which had just opened to admit a pale-faced and raven-haired young man.

The rest of the room’s occupants all turn as well to see Jon staring widely back at them from the doorway.

Sansa's brother is dressed in modest but clean clothes, not the browned and tattered workclothes in which she’s grown accustomed to seeing him while he carries out his chores over the grounds. His dark curls look damp and are swept back from his face and tied in a small, neat knot in the back of his head. Freshly bathed and groomed, he looks every bit the presentable subject of the court.

For a moment, Jon appears as if he’s come to the wrong room. Lingering in the doorway, his round eyes roam over the full table as if he hadn’t expected to find them all there. This is likely, Sansa thinks, since she herself had only expected to be dining with Ramsay this morning. The extra company had been quite an unwelcome discovery to her as well.

The moment of surprise passes quickly however and the newcomer resumes his brusque advance toward the large table.

Sansa realizes that her mouth is open and closes it. As of yet, Jon had never been invited to dine with them. Even when he’d been deemed well enough to leave the maester’s quarters, he’d taken all of his meals in the servant’s wing. Although the arrangement was surely intended to demean the former Lord Commander, Sansa thinks Jon got the far better deal, having been spared the tedium and nausea of dining with Ramsay.

He must be under some specific instruction, Sansa suspects, otherwise he wouldn’t voluntarily come here. She turns wary eyes to her husband, who maintains his pleasant hostly smile and doesn’t appear to share in her confusion. In fact, Ramsay is the only one at the table who doesn’t seem at all surprised by Jon’s unannounced arrival.

Recognizing the decadent gleam in the Bolton heir’s eyes, Sansa finally understands. Of course, she decides. How obvious.

What better morning to invite Jon to break his fast with them than on the morning Ramsay had also invited the leaders of his armies. On this morning, the table is filled with the very men who’d been present at the battle, and consequently in the Great Hall afterward. Whether or not Sansa recognizes them, they assuredly recognize her. Jon, equally so. From the start of the meal, she’d been bitterly resigned to the idea that Ramsay was sating himself on her humiliation at having to dine with her rapists. And, truly, it has been humiliating. She realizes now, however, that she was only partly right. Evidently, Ramsay’s appetite will call for more than just Sansa’s degradation this morning.

As Jon rounds to her side of the table and nears the empty chair to her right, she notices the slight stiffness in his gait. Although he’s certainly walking with more ease than in the days immediately following the rapes, the effect of the internal wounds on his cadence remains quite noticeable.

She’s glad at least that whatever discomfort Jon may feel, does not show on his face; his head is high and expression drawn as he stares straight ahead, ignoring the turning heads and murmurs of the men he passes. To her, he looks every bit the Lord Commander of the Nights Watch that he ever was.

Jon is pulling out the empty seat next to Sansa’s while she regards him glowingly for what she knows was a harrowing trek, when suddenly there’s a loud, halting screech that stops Jon where he stands and silences the room.

Looking around for the source, Sansa finds that the offending sound had been the hard scrape of wood against stone as one of the guests had shoved his chair back to stand. The guest in question, now on his feet, is staring at Jon.

The man has a thick golden brown beard and broadly handsome Northern features. The hair on his head is long and frames his face in a way that reminds Sansa of a lion. She recognizes him at once as the man who'd maimed Jon's lip with that crushing kiss. Both the bruising and swelling of Jon's bottom lip are healed now but while it had been mending, she couldn't help seeing the sneering face of the bearded soldier in her mind every time she looked at it.

The table is uncomfortably quiet as all the occupants regard the bearded man, who is standing in what appears to be a traditional gesture of respect.

Jon, more than anyone, appears taken aback by the display and stands frozen next to his empty chair, unsure of how to proceed.

At last, it’s Ramsay who breaks the silence.

“Lord Umber,” he says, eyeing his subject with no small amount of placation. “Although Jon Snow may be in possession of more…delicate qualities than is fitting for a man, make no mistake--he  is no woman; you need not stand.”

“Woman or not,” Lord Umber replies in his course accent. “I stand for every bitch I fucked.”

There’s only the briefest pause before all the men at the table suddenly burst into howls and guffaws.

Bristling, Jon takes his seat.

Unlike his subjects, Ramsay does not appear amused by Lord Umber’s crude enactment. Not outwardly, Sansa thinks. As the Lord of Winterfell, he must embody a certain self-possession. So, instead of joining in the laughter and chides at Jon’s expense, Ramsay feigns an affronted superiority.

“That’s enough, Lord Umber,” he says, eyes wide with what Sansa knows is fabricated severity.

The standing soldier takes his seat, but only, Sansa notices, after Jon is fully settled.

The curve of the man’s lips beneath his thick beard reminds Sansa of the last time she’d seen the look. It was in the Great Hall after the battle. As he stared down at Jon’s unfurled and overwrought form strewn over the table, he’d worn that same wry grin on his face. He'd taken his time to ruffle Jon then, even trying to arouse him through the abuse. But Jon had been stronger and outlasted the man’s ministrations. She could only feel pride for her brother then, but now all she feels is a howling hatred for this Lord Umber and a deep longing to see him meet a slow end in flames.

“The events of the battle are behind us,” Ramsay says, dawning his diplomatic air to mollify the rowdy group. “Jon Snow has paid the price for his treason, _hundreds-”_ he pauses effectively on the word-“ of times over. He is one of us now and all is settled.”

Lord Umber’s grin spreads. Although he’d been listening to Ramsay, his eyes never left Jon. “As you say, M’lord. All I’m sayin’ is, if the bastard wants another go, I’m not opposed. Seemed like he enjoyed himself the first time ‘round.”

Ramsay’s eyes are dazzling as he enacts another jostlement to his sensibilities. ”Now, now, Smalljon! I can’t have such unbecoming talk at my--“

“Were you there, Lord Umber,” comes Jon’s cool voice, cutting through the rising furor. “I hardly remember.”

Jon has rarely, as far as Sansa has seen, had need to shout over a crowd to be heard. Despite his lowly station, now is no different; the dining hall falls reverently silent at his words.

After a dense pause, during which Sansa's heart rises to her throat, Lord Umber leaps to his feet with such speed and force that his chair clatters backward behind him. Leaning over the table, the towering man looks to Sansa like he might climb over it to tackle the composed man on the other side. Jon stiffens slightly, but makes no move otherwise.

“What say I take your pretty arse over this table and remind you, bastard whore?”   

Before it can go any further, Ramsay is raising a regal hand.

“Lord Umber,” he says, an icy calm in his voice. “Take your seat please. I understand we’re all emotional about the recent battle, but we’re all on the same side now and there’s no reason to squabble amongst ourselves.”

For a moment, Sansa feels a foreign kind of gratitude to her husband for what appears to be a peace-keeping maneuver.

“If Jon does not remember you, he’s hardly to blame,” he continues. “After all, many soldiers did have their go at him that day, as you did. How is he to remember every _single_ one?” The last words are each punctuated by a solid and imposing pause that makes Sansa more ill with each application.

Still, Ramsay is not finished.

“Not to mention the countless others who came after he’d passed out, mind you. Must’ve been… how many was it, Sansa?” He turns a furrowed brow to his wife, who feels all the blood has drained from her face. Heedlessly, he plunges on. “Well, _dozens_ at least,” he assures the man.

Although Ramsay’s scolding tone is directed at Lord Umber, there’s no question among anyone present as to whom the lurid account is truly meant to scathe. Beside her, she catches a glimpse of Jon’s eyes, which had first been locked with Lord Umber’s in a firm and unwavering stare, but at some point during Ramsay’s speech had drifted downward until they were fixed hollowly to his plate, where they remain.

“So, you see, Lord Umber,” Ramsay concludes. “It isn’t fair to expect him to remember you.”

By the time Ramsay has finished speaking, Jon appears somehow smaller in his chair. The color in his face seems to have gone completely giving way to an ashen pallor.

It occurs to Sansa that this will be the first time Jon is learning of what had happened after he'd fainted. The memory of it makes her own chest seize up. 

At the time, she'd thought it was a small mercy that Jon was being spared having to endure the few remaining men at least. Now she thinks she must have been delirious from exhaustion and trauma because in reality, the revelation is staggering. Although Jon hadn't been willing when they'd taken him while conscious, he had at least been consenting; he had _chosen_  his submission. With his shoulders set and eyes wide open, he was fully alert and attentive to every man that approached him, personally suffering every second of their abuse as if the pain were the only think keeping him alive and whole. Unconscious, however, Jon had been completely apart from that physical pain and blind to the men inflicting it. His body was utterly out of his control and at the disposal of Ramsay's soldiers, who were certainly not lacking in any ill-will toward him.

She can guess that Jon is now wondering, with reason, if the men had not taken the opportunity to do more to him than his liveliness would have permitted. While Sansa has no doubts that the soldiers had been too drained themselves to attempt anything so bold, Jon doesn't know that.

Sansa might have monitored and itemized every human touch that found her brother's bare skin from the time his quaking arms had given out beneath him to when the guards dragged him up, but that stretch of time will be forever lost to Jon.

And the fact that there had been so _many..._  

Ramsay had not been exaggerating in his estimation. 

Was that perhaps why he'd let it go on instead of rousing Jon then, so he could later present his captive with the horrifying information that he'd been violated in even more ways than he knew? To add to the already towering insult of what Jon had endured, now he is presented with the news that his body had been used to satisfy the crude desires of  _dozens_ others while he lay unconscious. He would never know who, nor if they'd taken their pleasures from him in any other way. Perhaps, however, he can take some comfort in knowing that if the men had become imaginative in his incoherence, that Ramsay would have surely included the details of it in his recount here.   

Were Jon's hands within reach, she would take them in hers, or at least graze against them to give him a warm human touch. As it is, both of his hands are wrung together in his lap and out of view from the other guests. Only Sansa can see the white tautness of the knuckles on each hand as they hold one another in a death grip.

With his eyes now downcast, Jon is fortunate at least to miss the smug smile that has claimed Lord Umber’s rugged features.

“Apologies, M’lord,” he says, abandoning his aggressive pose at last and straightening himself. “Thoughtless of me.”

“Good man,” Ramsay says with an amiable smile. “Now, I say you and Jon Snow shake hands and put all of this behind you. Jon?” His intense eyes dart past Sansa to his ward on the opposite side of her.

When Jon makes no move to comply nor even to respond, Ramsay’s eyes flick to hers.

Before the Lord of Winterfell has a chance to reword the suggestion as a threat, Jon is pushing his chair back and standing up.

At the same time, both men extend their hands across the table. The shake is firm and looks entirely uncomfortable to Sansa. She can see Jon’s arm flexing beneath the fabric of his shirtsleeve from the strain of it.

Jon does not return the awful knowing smile still fixed on Lord Umber’s face, but holds the other man’s gaze in a way that is a stark contradiction to the friendly gesture.

“There now,” Ramsay says, when at last they part. “All better?”

Only Lord Umber nods. Jon holds the stare for a few moments longer before wordlessly taking his seat.

They carry on dining without disruption.  There’s little more reference to the battle and to what had taken place after it, but it’s scant and dodged, as if the men had deemed the matter sufficiently revisited for the time being. Jon remains resolutely silent for the remainder of the meal and Sansa thinks he hasn’t once glanced up from the table.

The plates are all cleared and the guests are becoming caught up in colorful, rumor-laden discussion of the Targaryen woman and her supposed army of dragons, when Sansa takes the opportunity to reach for Jon.

Beneath the table, she finds his hand clasped over his knee and covers it with hers. The sound he makes is so faint that she’s sure no one else catches it. Unable to look at him directly, she instead gauges his reaction by the tension in the larger hand beneath hers. With a firm squeeze that verges on the point causing him pain, Sansa waits until finally she feels the tension slowly and steadily leave him.

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey readers, anyone read Diana Gabaldon's Outlander?
> 
> Someone wrote me to say that my story reminded her of a scene from it. At the time, I'd never heard of the series but was intrigued that there was a published book out there with themes like these. Naturally, I dropped everything and ran to investigate. If somebody is out there writing seedy, dark, heterosexual yet sneakily homoerotic fiction—and a _series_ to boot!—Why haven’t I heard of it?! Anyway, 600 pages later, my mind is blown.
> 
> I guess they also adapted it to a show on STARS but I heard the male-rape scene is pretty toned down for TV(obviously). Not certain though.
> 
> Anyway! If you lovely lot enjoy this story, I’d like to recommend you Outlander Book 1. The author is a woman after my own corrupted heart. Also—kilts. Mmmm.


	4. All Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ramsay is gone from their bedchamber all night.

 

Ramsay finds he quite enjoys the protective nature of Jon’s and Sansa’s relationship. The way Sansa in particular coddles the grown man reminds him of the way a mother fawns over her child. He’s not accustomed to seeing this softer, more maternal side of his wife. Certainly, she’d never treated Reek with such tenderness. 

Ramsay enjoys the rare displays of affection so much that he doesn’t miss an opportunity to manifest them. One recent occasion had been at a hearing for a Wintertown farmer who claimed that he'd failed to meet his tax requirements because the cold had ravaged his crops and along with it, his livelihood. Standing to the right of where Ramsay sat on the throne, Jon had then proceeded to dispense his unsolicited input on the matter.

Without pause, the bastard began speaking out in defense of the farmer’s plight, going on about how the dramatic cold would fast inhibit all Northerners from meeting expected seasonal yields and how even the South would soon be feeling the deathly grip of true winter setting upon them. That was when Ramsay had silenced him with the blunt hilt of his sword.

The way Jon’s proudly set posture had broken as he buckled forward, and how his courtly back-swept hair had all tumbled over his face had been inexorably satisfying to Ramsay, who felt he’d been holding it back for ages. He’d even had to keep his eyes from fluttering closed at the rapturous groan that had caught in Jon’s throat upon impact. Still, as gratifying as the blow to Jon’s pelvic region had been, Sansa’s reaction had sweetened it further.

In a flash of red hair, the woman had bolted from her seat and gone to her brother’s side. Ramsay watched, captivated, as she descended upon his doubled form, sweeping him up in her throws of fretful attention, all airs of equanimity cast aside. She huddled over him, cradling his shaggy head in her hands.  She didn’t try to hide any of her concern for Jon then as she normally did around Ramsay, but in fact had seemed possessed by it. And Jon, in turn, had allowed it—nay, leaned into her embrace like a wounded pup seeking shelter.

The naked proof of their enduring bond at the hearing, and on numerous occasions since, had fueled Ramsay’s staggering epiphany. Alone, Sansa could tolerate almost anything Ramsay gave her and appear barely moved by it. Yet when it comes to Jon, she is as raw and vulnerable as flayed flesh. Somehow, the bastard has a power over her that extends deeper than the physical plane, to which Ramsay’s own seems limited.

Still, as telling as Sansa’s rush of vitality at the sight of her brother’s distress, Jon too seems to abandon all self-preservation when under threat to his sister’s well-being. If Jon’s hold over Sansa is a strong, so too is Sansa’s over him. More so, Ramsay might even venture.

The way Jon’s whole body seems to seize up at the merest mention of his sister has become a most reliable source of amusement for Ramsay, as well as a reprieve on days otherwise addled with disappointment. Unless Jon is involved, Sansa will sparsely give over to him anymore, but holds fast to an obstinate gloom and hollow-eyed stare. But where Sansa will not so much as bend, Jon will shatter. Being at the helm of such vulnerability is an invigorating position in itself, but Ramsay can’t deny the added satisfaction he takes in tormenting the man who holds such singular sway over his wife.

 

 

“I think it’s time I put a Bolton heir in your sister’s belly,” Ramsay says one day as he chews his venison across from Jon at the small table.

Lord Bolton had taken the liberty of inviting himself to dine in his ward’s personal chamber. It’s a small, plain room in the servant’s wing, but adorned with a window that looks out over the inner workings of Winterfell.

Jon’s is the only one of the servant’s rooms with a window. When Ramsay visits, he’ll sometimes find his former adversary standing at it, looking out over the grounds that had once been the Starks’. The room is so small that in the day time, the natural light from the meager opening is enough to illuminate the entire space. At night though, Jon has the use of a single candle. This evening, Ramsay has brought two of his own torches with him, and their thick posts now occupy the normally bare mounts on the wall and provide warm intimate lighting while the two men eat.

The Lord of Winterfell finds himself visiting the Stark bastard’s chambers more and more lately. He doesn’t stay long, usually only stopping briefly to impart some tale of the day’s hunt or to describe a recent trial in the Great Hall, which Jon would have been too busy with his chores to attend. He finds he’s come to rely on Jon’s reactions. After Ramsay has relayed a particularly grotesque detail, he’ll hone in on the way his companion’s broad chest contracts and swells rapidly beneath his ragged, loose-fitting clothes, and how his dark eyes go large and shiny.

This evening proves much the same.

At Ramsay’s words, Jon appears to choke on his mouthful of food and his already fair skin takes on a sickly pallor. The orange gleam of the torches glows back at him from the wide, dark orbs.

“Tonight is the night, I think.” Ramsay continues. “I will finish up here and go to her. I’m sure she’ll be waiting for me, warm in our bed, undoubtedly naked beneath her gown. Perhaps I won’t even wake her. Perhaps I’ll just climb in behind her, gently slide up her gown, and--” he slaps both hands on the table with such force and suddenness that Jon starts. “--get going,” Ramsay finishes with a wink.

Both fork and knife have gone still in Jon’s hands and the food that had nearly suffocated him moments ago is a forgotten lump in his cheek. 

“Yes. I’m sure it’s tonight. Before long, you’ll be an uncle, Jon. Or, whatever that makes a bastard. Do you think he’ll have fiery hair like his mother’s? Her soft features? A girl would certainly be an inconvenience.” With a put-upon sigh, Ramsay stands from the table and makes to leave. “But I suppose my hounds have acquired a taste for newborn flesh. Still, the _mess--”_

“Ramsay,” comes the breathless, slightly muffled voice behind him.

Half-way to the door, Ramsay stops and turns to regard the man at the table, who is hurriedly and with visible difficulty swallowing his mouthful of unchewed food.

“M-my lord,” Jon begins again, turning in his seat to address him.

Ramsay favors the correction with an expectant smile.

“I…uh. If I m… Uh--“

The litany of clipped, hurried sounds continues as Jon struggles to wrap his proud mouth around the words that will keep Ramsay from leaving. Intrigued, the Lord of Winterfell doesn’t rush him.

Jon’s hands, strong from a life of wielding a sword often and well, clench and unclench on his lap. His eyes are downcast in a careful display of deference or perhaps in search of the right words.

Ramsay too is curious.

Tell me, Jon, he thinks. What will you say to keep me from your sister?

 

 

 

 

Sansa wakes the next morning and is alarmed to find both the bed beside her empty and no memory of having been disturbed in the night.

Admittedly, the idea that Ramsay hadn’t attempted anything in the night is the less alarming realization.

Although she’d expected that upon her return, Ramsay’s attentions would be invigorated with a compensatory furor, he had in fact been _less_ rough with her and less frequent in his advances. In truth, the first few times had been hard and punishing in the way she’d expected, but had since become more mechanic and perfunctory. When it was physically painful it was never more than she could bear, and she swallowed her discomfited grunts well enough. 

It was only when Ramsay had begun _talking_ to her, that she found she could do nothing to stop the flow of tears.

Calm and almost consoling, Ramsay’s voice was the only sound in the otherwise dead silence of the night, accompanying her through the slow and enduring act.

He spoke of Rickon and of Shaggydog, and of their deaths. He spoke of Theon—his _Reek_ —and what he would do to him when he found him. Most often, however, he spoke of Jon and the events following the battle for Winterfell, what _she_ had allowed to happen to him there. It was clear that all of this was meant to fortify in her mind that all the death and sorrow that had befallen her and her loved ones, and would befall them in the future, was directly resultant of her escape with Theon. Even knowing his strategy, it still wounded her.

Fortunately, Ramsay’s words, however disarming, have been the worst of the damages so far. The Bolton heir hasn’t yet taken a knife to her. She expects that he’ll save that for when she or Jon does something particularly displeasing. Undoubtedly, when it happens he’ll invite his ward in to watch it. Surprisingly, Ramsay also hasn’t invited Jon to their quarters yet, to either witness or participate in her abuse. She supposes Ramsay is saving that as well. He wouldn’t want to waste such joys too early, and risk getting either of them accustomed to them. Bitterly, she is impressed with how far she’s come in her understanding of her spouse.

Jon too has come a long way in his understanding of the mercurial man. At first she’d thought her brother frightfully naïve and even incapable of comprehending the cruelty and depravity to which he’d thoughtlessly submitted himself. Over time, however, she has begun to think that Jon has a far better grasp of the situation that she’d originally thought.

She’d suspected it on that first night after the battle, when Jon had foolishly stolen a soldier’s sword and brandished it to the crowd without any real plan of how he would proceed from there. It had turned out to be an act. He’d intended to appear foolish and brash and to be dealt with accordingly for it. And he’d been successful.

Sometimes she thinks back to his face in that moment as the guards dragged her away from the table. While she’d screamed and shed her first tears of the night, Jon had been steady and knowing and forceful.

How had he known, she thinks now with clarity. How had he known that Ramsay would pick him and not her? Had he too noticed the dazzling blue eyes from above, clinging to him as his honor was stripped and sullied over the wooden table?

The sound of the door opening catches Sansa’s attention and she turns to see her husband striding into the room, looking distinctly refreshed.

“Where were you?” She asks as she shoves the thick blankets aside and rises from the bed.

“Oh, your brother’s room,” Ramsay replies, an amiable gleam in his eyes. “And my! What a spirited boy he is.”

“What did you do to him?” She crosses the room.

Ramsay favors her with a look of mock surprise when she stops in front of him. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting, Sansa. Your brother and I only talked. I will say this, though-- from all that I’ve heard about the brooding boy, I’d expected him to be of a more silent constitution. The bastard can ramble though.”

She flinches at the moniker. For a man who’d only recently been granted the name of trueborn, Ramsay takes more pleasure in pointing out the illegitimacy of Jon’s birth than anyone else Sansa knows of.

Swallowing her scorn, she persists. “What did you do to him?” She steps once more into Ramsay’s path when he moves to retrieve his crossbow.

The obstruction forces Ramsay to pause in his heedless preparations, and he finally eyes his wife directly.

“I’ll be hunting for much of the day, dear wife,” he says at last. Although his voice maintains its light canter, his stare is solid and weighty. She fights the urge to recoil when his arm extends toward something just behind her.

“Expect to see me at supper,” he says as he retrieves the crossbow.  The stare lingers heavily for a little while longer before Ramsay leans slowly forward and kisses her on the lips.  

Weapon in hand, her lord turns swiftly and leaves without another word.

 

 

Jon is lying on his stomach in his bed, apparently sleeping when Sansa sidles in through the door and closes it soundlessly behind her. The blanket is pulled up to his waist and what parts of his body are visible are bare. Her eyes trail the fine, alabaster skin over the landscape of back muscles. She doesn’t see any apparent lines or gouges from a crop or knife, and takes comfort in that at least.

As she crosses the short distance to his bed, she can’t help inspecting the spartan dwelling. Ramsay had moved Jon to the servant’s wing to further demonstrate the depths to which the former commander had fallen, yet Jon has never appeared discontented by the arrangement. The only thing that really seems to concern him, and he’d expressed it with seething dissonance after Ramsay had given the order, is his great distance from the royal chamber. Should Sansa cry out or need him, it would be a long trek through winding stairs and corridors to reach her-- if he learned of it at all, that is. It’s no secret that Jon bears an inextricable responsibility to protect her and, although she deeply resents it for the trouble it gets him, she can’t help the cavernous swell of adoration she feels with every self-effacing act he commits on her behalf.

“Jon,” she whispers, taking a seat on the narrow bed beside his prostrate form. Surprisingly, the urgency with which she’d bolted down to the servants’ wing is softened now as she reaches out to smooth a thick curl behind his ear.

Jon stirs at once at her touch as if he hadn’t been sleeping deeply. The idea casts an ominous shadow in her mind.

Although she’s well aware of Ramsay’s periodic visits with Jon, their meetings never last very long, certainly not all night. But maybe Ramsay had been toying with her this morning when he told her he’d been there. She has become increasingly aware that the only enjoyment Ramsay seems able to get from her lately is from dangling Jon’s well-being in front of her. Still, she can’t deny that if anything matched Ramsay’s juvenile amusement at watching her squirm, it would be the thrill of seeing Jon nearly throw himself at his feet to keep the lord away from her.

She tries to push the thought away. Maybe Ramsay had spent the night with a woman down in the village, a willing commoner on which to unload his sordid affections, and who could fill the hole left by Myranda. _Gods,_ Sansa can only pray that that’s the case.

“Jon, was Ramsay here last night?” She asks, cutting to the point while Jon groggily slides his bare legs out from the sheet and pushes himself into a sitting position beside her.

“Yes,” he says slowly, after appearing to think about it for a little while. “We ate.”

Sansa looks over to the small table where two sets of forgotten dining ware attest that two people had indeed shared a meal the previous night. Of this, she’s sure Jon is truthful. Still, it’s no news. Dining with Jon is just another way for Ramsay to taunt his ward; he knows how much his presence disgusts the other man.

“And then?” She presses, unaware of the urgency rising in her voice.

“ _And then?_ ”  Jon mimics. He’s clearly tired and looks worn thin, as if Sansa’s questions are more than he can bear at the moment.

Had he not slept, she wonders.

“After you ate, did he stay?”

Jon takes an impatient breath. “Yes,” he says at last.

Sansa’s mind turns sluggish. This is the very thing she’d dreaded since meeting Ramsay that morning. Still, she doesn’t know if she’s prepared to hear her fears confirmed.

“Why?” she asks finally, when she can find her voice. “What did he do?”

Jon opens his mouth to answer, then closes it again.

“Jon.” She leans into him, trying to meet his eyes as the soft brown orbs drift downward, concealed beneath black lashes. “Jon, what did he do to you?”

He stares between his feet.

 _Of course_ , Sansa thinks. Ramsay has never had a boy. He had Reek-- yes, but by no means is Jon like Theon; Jon is something else. Now, Ramsay will take his new pleasures from him, and for his part, Jon will be whatever Ramsay wants him to be because he won’t fight and risk endangering Sansa.

She curses inwardly.

“You can’t let him do this, Jon,” she says. He won’t look at her and she feels herself growing angrier with him. Straining to keep her voice gentle, she tries a different route.  _“Why_ did you do it?”

“I had to, Sansa. He was going to… He threatened to…”

“To what?”

Biting his lip, Jon shakes his head. When he speaks again, his voice is carefully restrained. “He said he was going to go, ‘put his heir in your belly.’ Said as soon as he left here, he was going to your room and … he said he wasn’t even going to wake you.” His face twists in disgust as he recalls the wretched words.

Sansa catches a faint glint in the corner of his eye before Jon looks down to conceal it.

“He said,” he continues, voice dropping to a near whisper so Sansa has to lean in to hear him. “He said that if… if it was a girl, he would –“ He bites his lip again and Sansa can’t stop herself from wrapping her arm around his tense shoulders.

“If it was a girl…He said he would feed it to his hounds.”

As Jon tucks his head down, emitting a deep broken sound, Sansa smooths her hand over his hair.

“He was lying, Jon,” she says when his breathing settles. “He was trying to make you act rashly.”

Jon looks up at her with wet, haunted eyes.

“Really,” she assures him. “Ramsay doesn’t want an heir-- son or daughter. Impregnating me would ensure nine months of my safety and I should be so lucky. And anyway, if he can’t harm me, then he can’t use me to control you. No,” she says, and attempts an assured smile. “Ramsay will not try to ‘put an heir in my belly.’ Not now at least. And I’ve told you already, you don’t need to worry about me.”

There’s still obvious uncertainty in Jon’s eyes, but Sansa’s lack of concern for the matter seems to settle him a little.

“Now, please. Will you tell me what happened?”

Whatever the cause, Sansa is certain now that Jon has been up all night. She only wonders how, if Ramsay was in here with him, he’d looked so refreshed when she saw him that morning. Her eyes flicker down to the naked torso and she knows that beneath the blanket pooling around his trim waist, Jon is wearing no smallclothes.

He looks torn when his weary eyes meet hers, and she knows at once that whatever Ramsay did, it was more than talking.

“He wanted me to tell him about Ygritte,” Jon says, in low resignation.

Sansa is speechless.

“He wanted me to tell him all of it. How we met over The Wall, how she spoke for me to the wildlings, about the first time we…” he looks away a moment, color creeping up his face. “Right up to when she was killed.”

“That’s all?” Sansa says and instantly regrets the bluntness of the words. Still, she can’t help feeling that, although the memories of his deceased love may be painful, simply ordering Jon to recall them seems fairly mild for someone as notoriously imaginative as Ramsay.

Regardless, she can see that it had been no small feat for Jon, who confirms it with a solemn nod.

As she watches her brother’s hands wheedling restlessly in his lap, Ramsay’s words from earlier that morning echo stubbornly in her head: _“my, what a spirited boy”_

“But why haven’t you rested?” she asks, sensing something is still amiss, but unable to place it.

“Ramsay was in the bed as I spoke, listening to me. To rest, I would’ve had to lie beside him. He stayed there all night so all night, I stood.”

“You disobeyed him?” She feels a rise of panic at the retribution for Jon should he press Ramsay’s patience.

“No," he says simply. "He didn’t order me to lie down.”

Sansa is confused but relieved.

“Just something that went unsaid, it seemed,” he explains softly and almost seems to smile, despite the odd stillness of his eyes. “We both understood my options: Either share a bed with him or go without sleep. I made my choice.”

“Why didn’t you sleep on the ground, Jon?” She asks but knows the answer before the words have left her mouth.

He’s shaking his shaggy head again.

Of course. Although Jon may serve Ramsay, the son of Eddard Stark would never subjugate himself so fully as to go willingly to the snake's bed. Lying on the ground, while not as consummate a surrender, was still a kind of defeat. Standing must have seemed then like the only tolerable option.

So stand Jon did, for the entirety of the night.

In her mind, Sansa can see Jon standing tall and firm in his quiet rebellion, his shoulders squared as he held the usurper's gaze. Ramsay, reclining in Jon's bed, would have been trying his best to mentally bend the other man in some invisible battle of wills, and Jon would have stood ever impervious. She’s certain her brother hadn’t even so much as leaned against the wall behind him for support.

Still, something about the recount doesn’t sit well with her. She scans the room and Jon beside her again.

_Spirted_

“But Jon,” she says at last, voice flat and automatic. “Why are you naked?”

It wasn’t often that she got there early enough to catch Jon before he’d set out for his morning duties. When she had, however, she usually found him in some discernible scrap of clothing, whether they’d be the scantest of smallclothes or his full work attire from the previous day right down to the boots, Jon having been too exhausted after the day’s labors to change out of them. Never before today, however, had she found him in his private room in a state of complete undress, save for the thin sheet.

Aside from the man’s own natural modesty, there had been a good reason for it. Although Jon had been granted his own personal room, the privilege of privacy did not come with it. So, anyone, particularly one Ramsay Bolton, could barge in with neither notice nor justification at any hour, and Jon would have no right to protest. Jon, who is perhaps the most self-preserved young man Sansa has ever known, would not be so careless as to allow an opportunity to be caught in such a vulnerable state.

So, what could have caused such a lapse in caution?

A reluctant bit of logic occurs to her: If Ramsay had indeed only just left there a short time ago, then Jon would have no need to worry about the man barging in on him again, and so his nakedness would be of little consequence.

But if Jon had been wearing clothes when Ramsay was there, why, she ventures, would he then take them off?

Jon is looking away from her again, surely to hide the deep coloration that’s claimed his face despite the sleep-starved paleness.

Briefly, she considers the chilling possibility that Jon had been naked  _while_  Ramsay was there, but the thought is so abhorrent that she dispenses of it immediately. At any rate, if that had been the case, it could only mean one thing and Sansa doubts seriously that Ramsay would have the stamina to take Jon for the duration of the night, nor would he have appeared so well-rested that morning.

Also, she believes that Jon has told her the truth, if only part of it.

“Did he…” she voices.

Jon turns in time to catch the way her eyes drift down to the sheet.

 _“No,”_ he says defensively, leaning away from her suggestive gaze. “Please, Sansa. I’ve told you all that happened. Now, I must rest. I’m to be outside the walls within the hour to collect arrows.”

It would be just like Ramsay to keep Jon awake all night then charge him to some arduous chore at dawn. Still, she can’t leave now, not without knowing. They’re in this, the two of them, and she won’t let Jon bear this burden on his own. No matter how deplorable the details, she will hear them and share their weight.

When she lingers, Jon turns his haunted, blood-shot eyes on her pleadingly.

“Swear to me,” she demands, pinning him with an unwavering gaze. “Swear to me that that’s all that happened.”

“I—please Sansa, I have to-”

Bolting to her feet, Sansa grabs the thin sheet from Jon as he attempts to pull it back over himself.

“What did he do, Jon? Tell me or I swear I’ll tear this blanket off and search you myself.”

“Sansa!” Jon’s eyes bulge and for a moment she almost laughs at his scandalized expression.

“I’ll do it, Jon,” she threatens. “Then I’ll send for Maester Wolkan.”

“Stop it, Sansa!”

They grapple at the sheet and after nearly ripping the ragged thing in two, Jon finally yanks it free from her, hissing his disgruntled assent.

Sansa watches him, his bare, smooth chest rising and falling in deep, exasperated breathes that match her own.

“Did he touch you?” She asks finally, as her eyes drift over his skin again, both searching and fearing what she’ll find. She knows well that the marks of Ramsay’s infatuation are not always visible.

“No, no,” Jon says again and sighs.

He returns laboriously to his seated position and Sansa rejoins him on the bed. Leaning on his elbows, Jon lets his hair fall around his face.

“He only…watched.”

“Watched?” She say’s confused, but by the tension in Jon's prominent back muscles and the curling of his bare toes, she thinks she understands.

Again, the image of Theon materializes in her mind. Ramsay had removed the man’s manhood from the equation long before he could use it to torment the Turncloak. Jon is whole and, also unlike Theon, nearly virginal. He’d spent most of his adult life guarding his sexuality like a sanctum and when he had finally opened the doors, it was only after vigorous bombardment from a Wildling woman who would go on to be his only chosen lover to date. It must have been a rare delicacy for Ramsay to see such rigid purity turned on itself.

She can’t help picturing Jon in the glow of the candle light, his fumbling fingers and hopeless flush betraying his inexperience, as he was pressed to perform this deeply personal act for an audience of one. The show must have been a true thrill for Ramsay matched by few others, including the night he’d first brutally taken Sansa when she really had been a virgin. Still, Jon is as unlike her as he is Theon. Jon is not like anyone, really. Sansa may have Eddard Stark’s resolve and Caitlin Stark’s fierceness but again, Jon is something else entirely. Jon is luminous with an inner fire that radiates scourging heat from every surface of his body and screams from his eyes.

Was that why Ramsay couldn’t touch him himself?

She is roused from her thoughts when Jon begins speaking again.

“He told me to touch myself as I spoke of Ygritte.” His voice is weary and resigned, but the words still come with visible difficulty. “Told me to describe her. The shade of her hair, how she looked when she died… her face as it happened. All while I…”

“Jon,” she breathes, not to stop him but to remind him that she's there. 

“A few times, I stopped. Just couldn’t go on. And he’d start sighing and yawning, you know, making like he was getting up to leave. He’d start talking then about how he'd raise his son to take pleasure from his mother the way he--” Jon’s deep voice breaks off in despair and he can't finish.

Sansa shuts her eyes and tightens her hold on Jon's arm. Her eyes drift idly to a spot of floor near the room’s small window. It might be her imagination but she barely makes out faint, silvery stains smattering the stone.

“Did he make you…”

Jon looks up at her again for only a moment but it's enough time to read the sheer horror in his eyes.

“Didn’t _make me_ , no,” he says, directing his stricken gaze back to the ground. “Didn’t seem to care, really, whether or not I finished.” Sansa can see him bite his lip beneath his veil of curls. “But, _g_ _ods,_ it was going on for ages, and after a while, I just got so tired and sore that I thought… if I just finished, he would go. But,” he rakes his hands through his thick hair, unintentionally pulling back his shrouding tresses enough for Sansa to see the wet clumps of his eyelashes. She already knows where this is going.

“He didn’t go. Just told me to keep going. Said all those soldiers got to… get off in me, so I should have my chance." There's a bitter edge in his voice. "Said I _deserved_ it."

“This went on all night.” It's more of an observation than a question. Sansa's eyes fix again on the spot by the window.

Jon shakes his head at the ground. “Stopped when he fell asleep.”

She nods.

Jon is hunched over his lap with his elbows resting on his knees. She’s now certain that what she’d walked in on when she entered his room was the first rest Jon had gotten all night. Eyeing the sheet drooping between his slightly parted thighs, she thinks he must be very tender beneath it from the long and waring treatment of the previous night. She wants to find him some soothing ointment.

Ramsay has become more lenient with her now that there are two of them over which to spread his attentions, and now that he knows that Sansa will not do anything that might risk endangering Jon. She could go to the maids and get a vile of some ointment for him or even go down to Wintertown, and the Lord of Winterfell likely wouldn’t even hear about it. She supposes she could go to Maester Wolkan but she still doesn’t fully trust him. Although he’d been mercifully gentle in tending to Jon’s wounds after his harrowing ordeal in the Great Hall, she can see that he is deep in Ramsay’s pocket and, like she and Jon, will be held accountable if he displeases his lord. No, she will go elsewhere.   

After assuring a horrified Jon that she would seek no retribution for what had happened, she leaves him to rest with what little time he has left to himself and immediately sets off to the village.

She knows that this new liberty she has is at Jon’s expense and feels a stab of guilt at exploiting it. Still, if any of this freedom can be put to lessening Jon’s suffering, she’ll use it to depletion.

 

 

Later in the day, she finds Jon shoveling in the stables. Wordlessly, she clasps the vial of salve in his hands and he accepts it, his dark eyes gleaming with warm gratitude.

Without delay, she leaves him again, not daring to test Ramsay’s lenience any more than she already has in a day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is so long! I know it’s a lot of introspect. I just keep getting caught up with wanting to make it logical and realistic for you guys. 15 pages in, I remembered that I already had Ramsay’s army rape Jon in the first chapter and any chance of logic or realism is long gone. What a weight off my shoulders!
> 
> Hey, let me know how you guys feel about getting in Ramsay's head space. I was really debating whether or not to including that first chunk, thinking it might be better to just leave him more mysterious. I thought I’d test it out anyway and get your input. I’ve written a few other blocks like it for later chapters, but let me know if you feel it’s unnecessary.
> 
> Thanks for reading and I love hearing your thoughts!


	5. Escort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon is sent to fetch Lord Umber.

He hates this. Oh, he hates it.

The intermingled voices rise in unreserved rapture and it’s all Jon can do to keep his eyes fixed on the far wall.

It is worse than last time, he thinks. Still, at least now the guards haven’t follow him in. He couldn’t bear another scene like the last one.

It had been weeks ago on Umber’s last visit to Winterfell when Jon had first been sent to deliver a message to the son of Greatjon. He remembers clearly how the large man had been sitting sprawled at the desk when a guard had led Jon in. Glancing up from his work with clear amusement, Umber had asked his visitor if he’d come to avenge his virtue, then, without waiting for an answer, had ordered that Jon be searched for weapons. From above the rolls of parchment, Umber’s blue eyes gleamed as he watched, only offering occasional direction to his guardsman, who was patting dangerously nearer the apex of Jon’s thighs. At last Jon managed to extract himself long enough to announce his purpose there.

It had been one of the more menial errands on which Ramsay had sent him, a simple question of which second course Lord Umber would prefer for their meal that evening. Jon’s face burned with the mundanity of it once the words had left his mouth.

At any rate, Lord Umber had ignored him, and instead went on to pose his own set of questions to the messenger, but of a distinctly more personal nature than Jon’s. He’d been particularly interested in whether or not Ramsay had made a eunuch of him yet and, when Jon had stuck solidly to his silence, Umber flatly ordered his guard to search him for a cock.

It had taken a second guard, appearing at Jon’s back while he was still reeling from the command, to hold his arms as the first one groped the front of his breeches. What had already been a disorienting turn of events, was made even more absurd by the cold and dutiful way in which the guard had carried out this new task. He was as prompt and detached as when he’d searched Jon for weapons, and Jon couldn’t help getting the odd sense that this was far from the strangest thing that his lord had asked of him.

When the guardsman had finally pulled away, reporting that Jon’s manhood was fully present and accounted for, Lord Umber gave a nod and Jon yanked himself free of the loosened hold. After at last supplying his answer in a word—“Venison”-- the Lord of Last Hearth had dismissed Jon.

 

The same guard had been standing outside the door when Jon had come today. Although he isn’t sure if the man had recognized him, Jon still flushed fiercely beneath the guard’s watchful stare as he walked through the door that was held open for him.

Part of Jon now wishes the guard _had_ followed him in, so it wouldn’t now just be the three of them there.

The wooden bedframe creaks rhythmically beneath the jerking movements of its occupants. Digging his nails into his palms, Jon tries to block out the accompanying sounds of breathy womanly moans.

Although Jon had looked away almost the very instant he’d entered the chamber and caught sight of the scene, he still needs only close his eyes to recall it.

Like a great bear, Lord Umber had been curled over the body of a woman. His wild locks nearly shrouded them both and clung in damp curls to the broad expanse of back and shoulders. The blunt and steady pace of his thrusts hadn’t let up at all as he regarded his visitor. The woman on her back beneath him had taken even less heed of the intrusion, and continued the lewd rolling of her body and appeared not even to notice him.

The thought of it still sends spikes of heat down his middle. He inhales sharply.

He thinks, not for the first time since he’s been there, that he will leave. There is nothing to keep him there. He’s delivered his message; Umber knows that he is summoned. Jon can go now.

His eyes drift longingly to the door once more and even as he wills his arm to rise and grasp the iron handle, it won’t move.

As if in answer to Jon’s plight, Ramsay’s voice fills his head, reciting the other half of Jon’s task, second in order but equal in weight.

_“You will escort him to me yourself, Snow.”_

Such a detail is as good as law from Ramsay Bolton, and to overlook it would be a punishable treason, but not paid out to Jon. Swallowing hard, he turns once more away from the door, thinking of the marks he’s sure he’d seen along the undersides of Sansa’s pale arms, quickly hidden beneath a draping sleeve when she’d caught him staring.  

“Ah, you like him, girl?” Comes the deep rumble from the center of the room, making Jon blink out of his thoughts. “Pretty, isn’t he?”

At the feminine hum of appraisal that follows, Jon bristles. He can feel the two pairs of lascivious eyes upon him like fingernails raking down his body.

“There’s room enough here for you, bastard,” Lord Umber calls over to Jon, where he keeps a watchman’s stance in the corner by the door. It’s as far away from the bed as the walls of the room will permit him.

The lilting giggle enticed by Umber's words causes sensation to dance up Jon’s spine and he stiffens where he stands.

With a deep breath he pushes their voices from his mind, fastening his attention once more to the spot on the far wall, and on seeing this burdensome errand to its end without misstep.

“Aye, just as well,” Lord Umber growls resignedly. “He’s probably no use to you anyway, girl. Ramsay likes to _cut_  his boys if you catch my meaning.”

The woman’s gasp is at once disgusted and remorseful.

“How ‘bout it, Jon?” Umber calls over again. “Ramsay relieve you of that pretty cock yet? Oh, what a sweet, dainty thing it was,” he recalls to the woman.

When Jon continues to ignore him, Umber heaves a laborious moan. “Oh, give us a look, will ya, Jon?” he whines. “Curiosity’s killin’ us.”

Gritting his teeth, Jon clasps his hands more firmly in front of him, truly grateful now that the guards had not followed him in this time.

“Fine, you prudish bastard,” Umber grumbles. “If you won’t be any fun.”

At last abandoning the effort to pry intimate physical details from the messenger, Smalljon applies his efforts instead to the ruination of the woman beneath him. There’s a kind of animal roar followed by more distressed creaking from the wooden bedframe and Jon guesses that they’ve changed their positions to one more accommodating to Umber’s enthusiasm. The woman, who’d seemed to be stifling her moans for some time after Umber’s crude revelation, now seems incapable of containing her guttural sounds as her lord takes her with renewed fervor.

Jon feels unnaturally hot in his layers, despite the cold outside. His breathing won’t steady itself, no matter how he wills it. Occasionally he feels the prickling of eyes upon him but shoves the feeling away as quickly as it comes.

To distract himself from the ravenous scene across the room, Jon meditates on Ramsay and the malice that had likely driven the fiend to condemn him to such an errand. As loathsome a man Lord Umber is, he could never approach the depravity of Ramsay Bolton. What Jon feels for the new Seat of the North, he carries in his very bones, and will likely die before it leaves him. Even then, he thinks it may live on, accompanying him in his final rest.

He thinks back to the swallowing blackness that had enveloped him after his brothers had stuck him with their blades one by one, and left him to bleed out in the snow. What might that endless nothing have been like were it filled instead with only the hatred he holds for Ramsay Bolton?

An eternity in a chasm of rage.

The idea chills him as much as the memory of that empty place. As he dwells on it, the blackness seems to creep around him like a spilling fog, as if sucking him back into its hold. Too easily can he recall the dense weight of that darkness bearing down on him, both filling him up and consuming him at once. There was nothing and he became nothing with it.

A sudden exclamation in the room pulls him out of the clinging depths and he’s awoken once more the feeling of his living body as well as the room surrounding it. With a deep breath, Jon looks around him, inadvertently glancing toward the bed then, just as quickly, away again. From the brief glimpse, the writhing couple appear no closer to tiring.

Bitterly, Jon swallows and adjusts his bearing to accommodate what he anticipates will be an extended wait there.

As dispiriting the prospect of returning to that unending plane of blackness, Jon thinks that if given the choice now between _that_ and indefinite detainment in Lord Umber’s bedchamber while forced to overhear the sounds of his violent passion, he might take his time in weighing his options.

Focusing on the wall soon becomes a feeble defense as the voices rise to thunderous intensity. Worse still is when Umber begins announcing loudly and in lurid detail all that he does and sees, further undermining Jon’s efforts to distance himself.

Jon’s legs grow restless beneath him and he shifts where he stands to relieve their tension.

It isn’t lovemaking, of that he’s sure. It’s more base and animal in nature, and Jon _knows_ it repulses him despite the fullness that’s been steadily growing beneath his clasped hands. With some difficulty, he’d managed to maintain a firm mental and physical distance while he could still focus on his revulsion with the man he’d come to collect. However, as the voices rise and fill his head, against his will they conjure up vivid images in his mind that ravage his focus and assault his body.

As starved of intimacy as he’s grown in the past months, despite what comfort Sansa gives him when she can, the setting is a particularly effective torture.

And how it aches.

Shutting his eyes, Jon digs the heel of his palm into the mound of flesh in hopes of quelling it, but the contact only sends a ripple of sensation through his belly. He swallows a groan.

It might not be so awful were it not for Umber’s ceaseless talking.

To the very end he talks, and Jon suffers every word. Still, he’s stopped thinking that it’s for his benefit that the man is so descriptive, as much as it’s for Lord Umber himself. The boisterous man seems to enjoy speaking of the act near as much as the act itself.

Jon doesn’t like to think back to the day in the Great Hall-- and certainly not now in his state-- but the way Umber is speaking too easily recalls the wretched memories.

He’d spoken this way then. Not loud and booming, more like low growls against Jon’s neck and jaw.

He’d said things that made Jon’s fists hunger to rise and strike him more than any man in the room. He’d called him, and _raven slut_ , and _bastard cunt_ , and _Sweet Jon_ , among the worst, and commended him on how well he took his cock. He’d told Jon how “slippery wet” he was, but hadn’t attributed it to the scores men that had come before. Instead he’d spoken of his “silky cunt” as if its wetness was a result of Jon’s own bastard yearnings, of which he couldn’t help himself. All the while, Jon had burned fiercely and chanced furtive glances to Sansa, praying to the gods she hadn’t heard any of it.

He’d been sure then that Umber said those things to wound him, but here, he speaks in much the same way, yet the woman takes no offense to it. In fact she seems as welcoming to the denouncements of her virtue as if they were proclamations of it. She is quick to answer to the various crude names he calls her, and even gives what sound to Jon like  _purrs_  of encouragement.

Jon can do nothing but stand and wait it out, clenching his teeth until his jaw aches as he fights the burning in himself. The tight confinement of his breeches is a welcome abrasiveness, but succeeds more in frustrating him than dulling the ache.

 

When at last they finish, the woman rolls off of the bed and gathers her scattered clothes to leave. As she passes Jon, her eyes trail openly down his body, lingering curiously where his hands are clasped in front of him. Catching the look, Jon tightens his grip over himself.

The woman’s face warms and she gives him a small amused smile. Jon thinks at first that it’s for what he’s obviously concealing, but then detects a tinge of something else in the smile. Her eyes dart briefly down again and at once Jon remembers that he hadn’t given Umber an answer. The woman, taking in his flushed and fevered appearance, must surely attribute his outward misery to some internal itch from which he’ll never again know relief. The idea of this woman presuming such intimate knowledge of him-- and _that_ knowledge-- makes Jon flush even hotter.

He opens his mouth and closes it, shaking his head stiffly in a silent refute of the implication in the woman’s eyes. The wordless defense of his manhood proves futile however and the woman glides from the room, still wearing that condemning smile. Flustered and more humiliated than before, Jon is left quietly stifling the fire in himself with slow concentrated breaths.

Meanwhile, Smalljon saunters around his chamber collecting his scattered garments. Jon prays that the man won’t approach him while he still nurses the aching proof of his very present, though slowly softening manhood beneath his clasped hands.

Mercifully, Umber takes his time though, dawning his layers piece by piece with a leisure unconcerned with predetermined engagements.

If Jon himself were still concerned about keeping Ramsay waiting, he could do nothing for it now.

By the time Umber does approach his corner, Jon has managed to settle himself. The large man’s broad chest is exposed between the open flaps of his shirt and he’s slowly lacing up his breeches.

“Say what you will about southern girls and their long, hot summers,” Umber says, coming to a stop directly in front of Jon. “There’s nothing warmer than pure Norther cunt.” The last word is spoken very near Jon’s ear and he grimaces.

Despite the larger man’s obvious disregard for his personal space, Jon doesn’t recoil but conveys his reproach in a brief glance before once more turning his attention straight ahead.

“So you’re to be my escort then,” Lord Umber says heedlessly, as he pulls his shirt on over his head next. He takes his time at lacing that too while he regards the silent man before him. Jon doesn’t need to look to hear the smile in his husky voice. “That Ramsay does know how to ruffle your virtuous feathers, don’t he?”

Jon does look up then.

“Lead on, Snow.”  

 

 

Sansa grows more anxious with every passing minute. She’s certain that the sweat on her brow is visible in the golden glow of the large room. Fortunately, all the guests seem too occupied with their own restlessness to take any notice of her growing uneasiness. Beside her, Ramsay appears to be meditating on something.

The side conversations and cordialities had died down early on in the hour since Ramsay had sent Jon to fetch Lord Umber.

She remembers flinching when she’d heard the order. Jon, who'd been even less successful in masking his outrage, had refused outright. Ramsay's response was prompt and dutiful. He'd called Sansa over to him and struck her solidly across the face with the back of his hand. The blow had been so forceful that she nearly spun but not so hard to knock her down. It was more stunning than anything. Jon was more affected by it, and after seeing to his sister, he'd given Ramsay one last scathing glance then immediately strode off toward Lord Umber's chambers. 

Beside her, Ramsay has now begun tapping his ringed finger against the table and the steady, metallic beat of it sets her further on edge. Her cheek is still warm from the impact of earlier, but her mounting worries now drown out its dull throb. 

She dreads to think of what could be delaying Jon and Lord Umber now. Her own experiences with the two men steer her imagination too quickly to undesirable places. In particular, the last encounter she’d witness between them emerges readily in her mind.

When Lord Umber and his men had finally gathered to set off from Winterfell some weeks after the battle, Sansa remembers how all of House Bolton had been lined up outside the main gate to see them off. After observing the customary respects to the lord of the house and bowing his head to Sansa, Lord Umber had not turned around to mount his horse and join his soldiers as she’d expected, but instead glided down the line, passing his lord and lady and a few other subjects. She’d thought for a moment that he meant to impart a last mocking remark to Harald Karstark, but had passed him too without a glance. Finally, he came to a stop directly in front of Jon, as if he’d intended then to bid the ward farewell in the same fashion as his lord.

Everyone on the crowded hill was watching him curiously to assess the meaning of such unprecedented behavior.

She vividly remembers the profile of Jon, wary and stiffening amidst the servants, how his shallow breaths had come out in rising puffs of steam between them as the man neared.

There was a hushed calm over the hill and the next moment, Lord Umber’s mouth was on Jon’s. She would call it a kiss were it not so violent and one-sided. Smalljon appeared to devour Jon’s mouth while Jon, pinned by the digging grip on his jaw, had fought unreservedly to dislodge himself from the man.

“Been a pleasure, Jon Snow,” Lord Umber had said when he finally pulled away, leaving the slighter man wide-eyed and seething. “Until next time.”

After such a bold move on Jon, Lord Umber went on to toss a look to match it over to Ramsay, as if inviting the man to object to his crude handling of his ward. She remembers the confident smile and a twitch of what might have been a wink. Ramsay’s face had been turned from her as he too watched the spectacle, so she didn’t see his reaction. Still, he’d seemed to pose little objection to it.

She’s still thinking on the extents to which the Lord of Last Hearth has pushed Ramsay’s lenience, when the man himself arrives.

It’s Jon who enters first, taking long strides to reach the head of the hall as if in a hurry to be alleviated of his task. Trailing a fair distance behind him, Lord Umber saunters in next, as per his customary leisure. His golden brown hair is its usual wild mane, and as he walks past the tables of lords, who’d all been waiting there for more than an hour, he grins openly at them.

Some scowl at him, others only shake their heads amusedly, as if they know something of the circumstances that had detained him, or at least can guess well enough, knowing the man.

Ramsay doesn’t draw any more attention to the lateness, by some miracle. Perhaps he knows, either by Jon’s hasty gait or simply through basic familiarity with Lord Umber, that his ward could not feasibly be to blame for the delay.

She does notice however, how Ramsay’s eyes linger on Lord Umber for some time after Jon has presented him.

Noting the sly amusement with which Lord Umber returns Ramsay’s gaze, Sansa wonders, once again, how the man gets away with so much.

The moment passes quickly and now the atmosphere of the room is one of peaked anticipation as everyone awaits the announcement, for which they’d all been summoned back to Winterfell to hear.

“We are going to have a banquet,” Ramsay says at last, clapping his hands together.

Sansa glances to the back of the crowd to Jon, whose eyes meet hers only briefly.  

“It has occurred to me that I have not given you all a proper thanks for your services to Winterfell. I want you to invite all of your men. There will be feast, there will be drink, and there will be women! Let the new Lord of Winterfell and King in the North show you the true rewards of loyalty.”

“With what coin?” Sansa interjects, unable to stop herself any longer.

The merry atmosphere in the room sours quickly at her words and an uncomfortably stillness settles over them.

Ramsay turns to her.

“My Lady,” he says, voice projected clearly over dead quiet of the hall. “Winterfell is fully equipped to host an observance in honor of the loyal men who fought bravely to secure it. In fact, I can think of no better cause to which we might devote our resources than one in celebration of these heroic men.”

Sansa almost laughs. They have scarcely any food. The townsfolk are barely surviving. What means do they have with which to entertain the Northern armies when they can’t feed the people right outside of their walls?

She says none of this, partly because she’d thought it obvious, but also because she suddenly feels the prickling sensation of having a large number of eyes fixed intently upon her.

Ramsay had been quite effective in coming off as the generous and gracious man of the people, while simultaneously making Sansa look like a heartless shrew for objecting such an extravagance. Now, every lord in the room is staring slantedly at her as if she’d just told them that all their gods were pigs in false beards.

Feeling hot in the face, she closes her mouth.

“You’ll have to forgive my wife, my lords,” Ramsay says at last, turning to his court. “Since that most unfortunate turn of events at the Twins, she’s become quite taken to sudden hysterics at the mere mention of parties. Worry not, my dear. No weddings shall occur, on my word. Even if Frey hadn’t already sworn his allegiance, we haven’t a disposable nephew with which to marry off in exchange for it.”

“You got a Karstark there,” chides Lord Umber huskily, and he winks at the man sitting to Ramsay’s right.

This produces a round of laughter across the room and from the other side of Ramsay, Sansa sees Harald Karstark bristle and force his tight lips into a good-humored smile.

Thus, the matter is forgotten.

During the assembly, which goes on for another hour, it’s decided that there will be a banquet held for all the Northern houses. Even those who’d sided against the Boltons will be invited as a symbol of amnesty for their momentary lapse in judgement. They decide on two months from the day, as a sufficient amount of time to gather supplies, and all houses present—though not obligated-- are  _welcome_  to contribute what they deem a suitable donation to the event.

The meeting is nearing its end when Ramsay suddenly calls to his ward.

Icy eyes roam over the group and finally land on the dark man standing silently at the back.

She sees Jon stiffen slightly, and his eyes shift around the room.

He always looks out of place in the Great Hall, she can’t help thinking. She’d thought so back before he’d left to take the black, but back then it had been because he was never permitted to join the rest of the family at the head table. Now, however, after everything that had taken place in this room, with these very men, his discomfort is for a very different reason. She knows that it isn’t out of respect that he stands at the far back of the group throughout the proceedings.

“You were invited to this council for a reason,” Ramsay says to him. “And it’s that you, more than anyone else, will be expected to attend this banquet.” He brings the tips of his fingers together to form a steeple with his hands. “Consider yourself the  _guest of honor_.”

A wave of murmurs pass over the group.

If Jon had looked displaced before, he looks now like he may turn and bolt from the building. Sansa guesses that it’s no small amount of effort that keeps his feet firmly planted.  

“It will be important for those who once stood with the Starks to see you here, healthy and thriving, and most importantly,  _serving_ House Bolton _._ ”

“Yes, M’Lord,” he says, barely heard above the rise of speculative murmurs.

At last, his brown eyes rise to hers and she seized them in a solid stare.

 _I’ll be there_ , she implores with the look.  _I will be with you._

Then his gaze drifts past her and seems to go far beyond the confines of the room. For a moment longer, she tries to catch his attention again, but knows she’s lost him. Giving up, she decides she’ll visit him later in his room and they’ll speak then.

Although it may be no great comfort to Jon, the knowledge that she too will be present at the banquet does ease her worries, if only a little. From her high seat at the head of the hall, she’ll be able to keep an eye on him and even intervene should anyone attempt anything. However elusive Ramsay’s true motive may be, staging a repeat of the events following the battle doesn’t appear to be it. Still, her heart lurches as the idea of Jon wandering alone and unprotected amidst a sea of soldiers who would likely all recognize him instantly. What would she do if she lost sight of him in the throngs of attendants?

In her mind, Sansa’s sees a group of dark figures huddling Jon away, hiding him in their numbers and stifling his struggles and cries with their many hands. They carry him away from the bright lights of the banquet before anyone can noticed his absence.

The haunting image of her brother’s large frantic eyes just before they’re shrouded in shadow is the last thing she sees before she’s roused by another loud clap from the man beside her.

As Lord Bolton calls the meeting to a close, Sansa has come to a decision of her own. Although she knows it’s the only possible choice, it had been a difficult one to make. It will mean much more pain and suffering for them both should she fail. Still, she’d rather take a chance and risk getting flayed alive, than sit and watch Jon endure another slow torture the likes of what he’d suffered after the battle for Winterfell.

No, she thinks. There is no other way. She must find a way to get them both out of Winterfell before the banquet.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in school now so the chapters may come a little slower for a while. Thanks for the patience and let me know what you think! 
> 
> Hey, anyone seen The Last Kingdom?
> 
> The first season aired on BBC but now NETFLIX is on board so you can check it out there. It’s this cool little historical fiction that I think is right up the alley of GOT fans waiting for Season 7. I just finished the 8 episodes and now I need fiction! But last I checked, the fandom only has 2 stories and neither of them is the thing I’m craving. So, please! Writers, check out the show and write. I’ll do the same.
> 
> Although I hope you guys will just go check out the show just 'cause I asked you to, I'll leave this here as a little extra motivation:
> 
>  


	6. Pretty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ramsay admires.

It’s a nice face, Ramsay must admit as he regards the man staring up at him. Well, when he shares half the breeding of Sansa, it's hardly a surprise.

Ramsay pulls his blade from the small sheath latched to his belt.

It’s the type of face Myranda would have called “pretty,” and from a distance fawned over like a blushing maiden, too common herself to have ever approached the man.

As he tests the blades fine edge, Ramsay thinks on another boy whom the kennel master’s daughter had called _pretty_. Well, she hadn’t said it aloud, bur Ramsay knew.

“Pretty, isn’t he?” He’d said one day, coming up behind her as she watched the boy from the kennels. Unaware of Ramsay’s approach, she’d leapt and nearly dropped her rake, quickly looking away.

Although Ramsay never knew his name, he remembers that the boy had worked in the Dreadfort stables. He was a good head taller than the Bolton heir and hard with lean and sturdy muscles that were pronounced even beneath his rough work clothes. His hair was the color of straw and covered most every surface of his body in faint wisps in a way which Myranda must have thought alluring, but which Ramsay only found messy and ceaselessly difficult.

Two days after her nameday, he’d presented her with the boy’s flayed corpse so she could see how pretty he was on the inside. Ramsay had meant to have him done sooner, but he’d been young and more emotional then, and his work was not as fast as it is now. Nor as clean.

He still remembers the soft choked sound she’d made the moment he’d unveiled the boy, and how her luminous green eyes had glistened and stared.

Ramsay wonders what Jon is like inside. The smooth plains of soft skin over firm slopes of muscle would certainly make for clean slices. He imagines how the man would stare up at him with those big, dark dog’s eyes as Ramsay made his slow, deliberate incisions—much like he stares up at him now. He imagines the sounds Jon would make. Would he cry out? Would he beg, like they so often do? Would he bite his tongue until it bled to keep silent? That seems more like him.

Ramsay is certain though, that he would leave Jon’s face.

It is a nice face.

As he dips his blade in the water, he lets his eyes trace the soft yet rugged features and the damp hair scattered in dark rays around his head.

As he lowers the knife, the full lips tighten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little tide-you-over ‘til the larger post, which will be up shortly. Sorry, just wouldn't flow there. Think of it as a part one.
> 
> You guys deserve to know that meaty chunks of the first 10-12 chapters were all written around the same time but in no planned order. So, although I try to post them in a sensible, gradual way, they may still be a little disjointed at times. Let me know if the progression seems jarring and I'll see about rearranging some things. Until then, maybe it’s best to think of these chapters more as _loosely standalone_. What do you think? They still reference each other (there’s still a banquet), they just aren’t always directly linked to their neighbors.
> 
> You may call that lazy authoring or overly convenient and I would have to agree. It’s completely convenient. I hope you guys enjoy and thank you for the support and encouragement, and I love hearing your thoughts!


	7. The Cut Pt. I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa finds them in the washroom.

Upon opening the door, Sansa sees Jon lying flat on the table near the wall with Ramsay standing over him holding a knife very near his exposed sex.

Every surface of Jon’s bare skin is glowing with perspiration and his brown eyes are as large as Sansa has ever seen them as he stares sidelong at where she stands frozen in the doorway.

“Ramsay.” The name ekes out from between her tight lips.

“Oh, Sansa,” Ramsay says, eyeing her over his shoulder. “Good of you to join us. Come in, come in.”  He turns back to Jon and to what he’s doing to him. “I was just telling your brother about Reek.”

Without thinking, she lunges forward.

“Ramsay, please—“

Her only thought as she reaches out is that she has to stop him, but as her hand makes contact with Ramsay’s arm, all plans leave her.

In the dense silence that follows, Ramsay is regarding the hand on his shirtsleeve with some process of consideration. In the corner of her eye, Sansa catches how the light dances across the blade in his grip. His gaze meets hers and she retracts the hand at once.

For a few breathless moments, she is held there, impaled by his sharp eyes. When he finally turns away, his voice is cool and unreadable.

“Why don’t you sit, Sansa,” he says. “We won’t be long here.”

Behind Ramsay, Sansa can see Jon’s breath coming in and out so rapidly as he lies rigid atop the table that she’s reminded of a woman beset with the beginning pains of childbirth.

From beneath damp and sticky lashes, Jon watches Ramsay’s knife hovering over him. Every muscle in his body is taut with the strain to still. The thick cords in his feet rise and flex beneath the skin as he seems to fight to keep from kicking, and his hands are tight fists at his sides.

He isn’t tied down, she thinks, as a weight settles in her gut.

In his utter nakedness, Sansa can see every mark on Jon’s body. Aside from the yellowish blotches of mostly faded bruises, there are no new cuts nor blemishes that interrupt the fair, smooth skin. Neither are there any apparent abrasions from recently removed ropes around his wrists or ankles, nor bruising from too-tight bindings. No hand-shaped worry marks around his neck to suggest that someone had resorted to restricting his air flow to keep him compliant. Nothing. All signs of a struggle, fight, or forceful taking are resoundingly absent.

It would seem that Jon is bound there by his will alone.

The hand wielding the blade begins its descent below Jon’s navel, and it’s as if all of time slows down.

In her mind, Sansa sees Theon.

Theon, who had been left with only rags in which to dress himself and who slept in the kennels. Theon, the grossly subservient wisp of a creature, whose ties to his manhood had been all but severed in both body and mind. Theon, who had been _Reek_.

 _No_ , she asserts. _Jon cannot be that. He can never be that._

If she rushes Ramsay now, the impact may jostle his knife and cut Jon worse. She could use something as a weapon. Does Ramsay have another dagger on him? She might be able to reach it quicker _._

But she has to do it now, while he— _now_ , before he—she has to do it _now_ — _He’s doing it!_

The faintest sound escapes Jon’s throat as the knife’s edge slides down his pubic region, leaving a smooth, hairless surface in its wake.

Removing the blade, Ramsay then dips it into a small water basin by Jon’s thigh. After stirring it around to dispense of the clinging black coils, he lifts it again to reveal clean steel. He’s about to reapply the knife when he stops.

“Sansa,” Ramsay says, eyeing her over his shoulder. There’s an edge of irritation to his voice.

For a few moments, Sansa only stands there, feeling as weightless as an apparition.

Vaguely, she remembers that he’d told her earlier to sit down. She also remembers to breath. Quickly, she goes to the lone chair near the head of the table but cranes her neck up to keep Ramsay’s knife in her sights.

The harried pace of her heart wanes slightly but its fretful pounding fills her dizzy head. She blinks the spots from her eyes as she tries to recover herself.

“As I was telling Jon,” Ramsay says, voice returning to its amiable buoyancy. “Reek was very sweet. Not like your turncloak.”

The Bolton heir applies the blade again for a particularly long stroke that ends at the base of the softened appendage, causing another breathless sound to escape Jon’s parted lips.

“The day that Reek was born was a very special day. It all began with one… _cut_.” He gives a fluid swipe of the knife that is angled a bit too precariously for Sansa’s comfort—Jon’s too.

From where she sits, she cannot see her brother’s face fully but catches the way his chest leaps and contracts in jerky breaths.

“But do not mourn for dear Theon,” Ramsay continues. “It wasn’t all bad for the boy. I did arrange a final send-off.”

In truth, she had never known exactly how it had happened, and certainly never would have asked Theon; the man had been so rattled after it all that she’d feared he might fall to pieces at the mere mentioning of the man who had mutilated him so. She’d been left to assume that Ramsay had just tied him down and done it.

“Oh yes,” Ramsay says to Jon, whose expressive features must relay Sansa’s own question. “It was important to get Theon to full-mast—In order to ensure the cleanest cut, you understand,” he adds proficiently. “Myranda was...quite hospitable.”

Ramsay’s free hand glides idly up Jon’s thigh to take Jon’s sex securely in his hold and suddenly his eyes are on Sansa.

“You remember Myranda, don’t you, dear?” The grave stillness in his eyes makes Sansa’s throat feel as dry as an Essos desert and she swallows.

She’d wondered when the time would come that Ramsay would collect on this particular debt. The punition could not be public, not like it was for her treason and recapture, of which all of Westeros was surely abreast. This would be personal. This would be between the just two of them—three of them, were Theon present. But as it stands, Jon is there and as usual, he will make for a more than adequate channel through which Ramsay will impose his wrath on her.

Ramsay holds her gaze for a moment longer before lifting the vulnerable sack of flesh to apply his blade to thicket of curls beneath.

She exhales.

Another soft sound escapes Jon’s throat and she realizes that he too had not been breathing.

It’s only another game, she wants to tell him, though admittedly she too had been fooled.

What had she done? Had she been insolent in the recent days? He surely can’t know of her plans to smuggle Jon out before the banquet. Certainly, Harald Karstark had been keeping an eye on her, but no more than usual. And she’d  been careful to avoid the weaseling man in her investigative travels over the grounds. Ramsay can have no real cause to suspect anything.

It certainly couldn’t have been Jon. Of that she has no doubts. Jon, of course, has only ever been insufferably obedient, surely as much to her vexation as to Ramsay’s, who, so starved for sufficient excuse to punish his ward, has occasionally resorted to invention. Perhaps that’s it then. Perhaps Ramsay had implanted a blade of grass in the mane of his horse and is now punishing Jon for negligence in his grooming duties.

As she catches the familiar gleam in Ramsay’s round blue eyes, however, she thinks it isn’t that either. Although her husband is certainly not above such undue harassment of the man who’d nearly rallied the North against him, she thinks it is something baser, something _deeper_ than mere boredom.

Then as she eyes the sinuous arcs of Ramsay’s knife and the way the blue eyes seem more trained to Jon’s face than to his task, she understands it.

A trial then, she confirms. He is testing the extent of his power over the other man.

Each time Ramsay brings the blade to Jon’s skin, Jon’s naked breast swells and stills, but his limbs remain fastened to the table, his muscles only tightening and quaking from the strain of stillness. Then, as the blade’s fine edge leaves his skin, having skillfully swept away another strip of dark curls, Jon emits another shaky exhalation and tries again to master his breathing, but no other sound of objection nor even the feeblest resistance is uttered otherwise.

It would appear, Sansa thinks, that Ramsay’s power extends quite far.

She curses her position, angled above where Jon’s head lies on the table. From there, she cannot see his eyes. Still, she’s somehow certain that when the dark brown orbs are not following every angled flick of the blade at his groin, they are trained to Ramsay’s own eyes.

She doesn’t want to think that there’s a plea in that hopelessly expressive gaze, but she knows Jon too well. What words never leave his lips, his eyes will scream. And Ramsay is ever attentive to his nonverbal speech.

The Lord of Winterfell absorbs every clipped gasp and quivering breath. The scrape of Jon’s fingernails against the wood of the table seem particularly informative. While Jon is very interested in the blade’s harrowing dance around his manhood, Ramsay appears to pay no more mind to it than what is strictly necessary in carrying out the sensitive task.

Furthermore, he seems to revel in the silent hysteria stirred by his inattentiveness to the weapon. Although Sansa is fairly certain now that Ramsay doesn’t intend to castrate Jon, she can’t say with any certainty that it won’t happen anyway from sheer bloody carelessness on the part of the knife’s wielder.

Each time Ramsay moves to apply the blade, he seems to put exceedingly less effort into the aiming of it, and as a result both Sansa and Jon swallow their tongues. Herself, she can edge no further forward in her seat before she’ll be tumbling out of it.

And through it all, Ramsay is in rapture. The considerable amount of attention that isn’t paid to the sharp blade in his hand, is directed wholly on Jon, whom she knows is a show all on his own.

 

 

When at last, Ramsay seems done, he rinses his knife a final time.

On the table, Jon is as boneless as a discarded puppet, staring vacantly up at the ceiling. Only the steep rise and fall of his chest speaks to his liveliness. The cyclic physical and emotional strain of Ramsay’s game has left him a haunted, feverish thing. Sansa too feels drained from it and is damp beneath her layers from the anxious sweating.

Gathering up what little he’d brought with him and returning the blade neatly to its small leather sheath on his belt, Ramsay goes to stand over her.

Angling her chin upward, he leans down to kiss her deeply. As stunned as she is, she offers no resistance.

“See that he’s dressed and returned to his room, will you, dear,” he says when he pulls away. “I need him up promptly at dawn to prepare the horses for the Frey’s departure.”

Without another glance at his ward, he turns and exits the washroom.

As Sansa watches the door close behind him, she thinks that if there’s anything good to be gleamed from this entire ordeal it’s that Ramsay appears to find more joy in threatening Jon’s manhood than in actually removing it. She can only pray it continues to be enough.

“What happened, Jon?” she asks, when her breathing at last settles.

Jon tilts his head up to meet her gaze.

“I had to,” is all he says, and even through his exhaustion she hears the tinge of apology.

She doesn’t need to ask what made him do it. She can guess well enough what awful things Ramsay had said to coax him into following him there without the use of force or guards.

Instead she says, “did you know that he would…that he _wasn’t_ going to…”

Although she can’t reach the words, Jon seems to understand her after a time.

He doesn’t answer but moves to sit up. Against her own body’s protests, Sansa too rises to aid him, but stops when her eyes fall to his lap.

She’d heard of women in the South voluntarily undergoing hair removal treatments in their more intimate areas. Margaery had even openly described to Sansa her own experiences with hot wax as the two sat together in the gardens of King's Landing. At the time, Sansa had been scandalized and speechless, much to Margaery’s amusement, but had never considered that the same odd practice might be done to a man.

It is an arresting sight to say the least.

As she looks upon Jon’s truly naked member, which looks even more vulnerable and exposed now without the bed of soft curls enclosing it’ base, she’s reminded of a very young Rickon sprinting naked about the halls while in flight from the threat of a bath.

The likeness makes Jon appear instantly younger in Sansa’s eyes, and she feels another irrepressible swell of warmth toward him.

When Jon catches the direction of her gaze, he too looks down to see for the first time the results of Ramsay’s thorough blade. After a moment of apparent bewilderment, he quickly moves his hands to cover himself, turning a flushed wince up to Sansa before looking away.

It’s only then that Sansa realizes she’s been staring, and quickly averts her gaze as well.

Without meeting her eyes, Jon lifts himself, grimacing at the stiffness in his body after having been laying on the hard wooden table for so long.

One hand still covers himself as he goes to collect his clothes.

Sansa is so busy with trying not to look at Jon that the notable location of the discarded garments comes as a belated revelation to her.

Jon seems to realize it just as it dawns on Sansa. His back stiffens for the briefest moment before he bends to retrieve his crumpled breeches and shirt, which had been lying implicitly near the wooden tub, from which Sansa now notices steam rising.

Evidently, the moisture that had clung to Jon’s bare body when she’d entered was not only from perspiration.

So, it wasn’t arbitrary that Ramsay had chosen here to hold his demonstration. Before subjecting Jon to his crude blade, he’d apparently bathed him, something that, to Sansa’s knowledge, he hadn’t done since walking in on them that first time in the week after the battle. But Sansa had been present and even then, Ramsay had taken many liberties beneath her gaze. She shutters to think of what the man, so intoxicated by his own power, might have done without her supervision.

Very slowly, Jon turns to her.

When Jon is very uncomfortable, the deep redness rises up around his eyes. It does so now and she wants to ease him somehow, but can think of nothing to say.

Instead, she ignores the bath and helps him gather his clothes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need a Modern English to ASOIAF Dictionary, or at least a Medieval wordsmith to tell me the appropriate names for things. I did find this neat site though: http://www.etymonline.com 
> 
> Well, I hope you all enjoyed the chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. The next one will be up soon! Expect some lovely melodrama!


	8. The Cut Pt. II: Warm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Ramsay is finished, Sansa walks Jon back to his quarters.

After Jon dresses himself, looking barely present in the act, Sansa walks with him back to his room, where she lingers watching him.

He doesn’t look at her as he sets about his evening routine, but brushes off his boots and lays out his work breeches across the small table as if she isn’t there.

When she can no longer stand it, she goes to him. For a moment, he looks as if he might pull away, alarmed by the sudden presence of her hand on his shoulder, but he only goes very still.

Slowly, she lets her hand move up and down the thick upper arm in a soothing motion.

Although Jon has always been strong in body, the demands of his daily chores on the grounds have filled out and fortified his compact physique. She can feel the solid contours of shapely muscles beneath his scruffy shirtsleeve. 

Jon gives no indication that the touch is unwelcome, but what little encouragement he expresses, is too subtle for Sansa to detect. As a test, she glides her hand up to his head, allowing her fingers to sink beneath the thick tresses and cup the curve of his scalp.

It’s undeniable then. The way Jon leans into her touch is all the invitation Sansa needs. In an instant, she is pressed against him, her full body flush with Jon’s side. At the sudden rush of contact, a deep gasp escapes his lips.

From then on, his breaths come shuddering and quick and she knows now he’d been holding them back since the ordeal in the washroom. She braces him to her, one hand pulling his head against hers and the other clutching him around the front. Although he doesn’t face her to return the clinging embrace, one of his own hands rises to squeeze her arm.

They stay this way for a while, locked against one another, neither of them speaking. Sansa is content to remain that way but Jon breaks the silence.

“I can’t bear it anymore, Sansa,” he says, in a voice low and aching with weariness.

“You don’t need to bear anything, Jon. I’m here,” She whispers, pressing their heads together.

“No.” Jon gives her arm a last firm squeeze before withdrawing his hand. “No. You don’t understand.”

Gently but decidedly, he pulls away from her, and Sansa feels a distinct chill fill the new space between them.

“What don’t I understand?”

Both of his hands move to grip the back of the feeble dining chair, as if for support.

“He didn’t threaten me, Sansa,” he says at last, as if it means something and Sansa will know what.

She only frowns and he tries again.

“He didn’t… _have_ to threaten me,” he clarifies, but it makes little difference. Still Sansa stares at him searchingly.

In his frustration, Jon looks like he might snap the rotten back bar of the chair in his grip.

“I went on my own, Sansa. Do you understand? I went— _with him_.”

In the sparsely-lit room, Jon’s face is even more shrouded beneath his draping curls and his wide eyes seem to glow from the depths. Sansa can’t help thinking that he looks vaguely mad.

“I’m not sure I do,” she says slowly. “You’re saying that you went willingly with Ramsay to the washrooms?”

Jon’s answer is a stiff nod, his eyes still large and too-clear in the fading light.

“I knew where he would take me. He told me. I didn’t know he would do _that_ ,” he adds, indicating with apparent discomfort to what Sansa had walked in on. “I knew we were going there though.”

Still waiting, Sansa can think of no response. As far as she can see, Jon had explained nothing and in fact had left her with only more questions.

Jon sucks fiercely on his bottom lip as he arranges his thoughts.

His restlessness has infected Sansa and she shifts uneasily between legs. She’s finds when his eyes at last drift down to the table, she can think more clearly without their manic weight upon her. Still, Jon’s desperate battle with whatever it is he’s trying to tell her is a distressing sight.

Having gathered his thoughts, he attempts a different approach.

“When you touch me, Sansa. It feels so good sometimes it...it hurts.”

He waits then, gauging Sansa’s reaction. Evidently her response is not condemning and he continues.

“It’s just been so long, since I’ve…since I’ve felt anything but pain and the bloody cold. I swear the chill gets so bad most nights, I feel I’ll be solid ice by morning.”

“Jon—”

“No,” he hisses, as she reaches for him. “You must hear me.”

Although Jon has made no move to fend her off, something in the look he gives her turns Sansa’s legs to stone and she finds she can compel herself to move no nearer to him. It’s his eyes, desperate and almost _unwell_. Jon doesn’t need to say it but the message is clear: _You will not want to touch me after you hear._

Swallowing, she withdraws her outstretched arms. She will hear him. She has no choice.

When he’s sure she will not try to comfort him again, he begins his recount of the evening.

“There was a bath ready,” he says, and Sansa watches the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he speaks. “I remember seeing the steam rising out of it. For a long time, I only stared. Didn’t even hear him when he told me to get in. I remember thinking, it was a trick.”

Sansa can’t help sharing the sentiment, but refrains from commenting.

“But gods, it was so warm. I don’t remember a time I was so warm. Every muscle in me was screaming and I couldn’t feel any of my aches anymore. I didn’t think I should ever move again.”

It occurs to Sansa then for the first time that the hot baths, enjoyed by herself and Ramsay as wells as the other elite members of the court, were a luxury not extended to the servants. Why hadn’t Jon said anything? Worse still, why hadn’t Sansa thought of it?  

Unaware of his listener’s deepening shame, Jon continues.

“He started to pour water over me. He wasn’t rough. Not like …” He looks at her and she winces but nods.

 _Not like the last time_ , she thinks.

“He said that I’d pleased him. Said I’d been a loyal ward and deserved a gift for it. Said he wanted to…reward me. Then he…he—”

Whatever the details of the next part, Jon seems to struggle greatly with voicing them. Sansa reaches out but again he shakes his head, waving her away as he tries to regain his train of thought. Her heart leaps at the sight.

“Jon, do you want to sit?”

“No,” he barks and pounds the chair into the ground with such force that Sansa fears the flimsy thing will rupture. “Gods, Sansa, will you not let me get this out. I have to say it quickly before it burns me up inside.”

Still frowning, she nods and holds her tongue.

“It’s been so long,” he says again and Sansa’s gut churns at the starving tone of his voice. “Since I’ve felt anything like that. Apart from when the men shove me around when they know I can’t fight them, or when Ramsay comes to—” he stops abruptly. He looks away so all Sansa can see is the bob of his throat as he swallows.

Sansa’s instinct is to delve into this broken piece of information, but, remembering Jon’s urgent request, represses the impulse, clamping her mouth shut.

Shaking off the slip, Jon continues. “But the way he was touching me then, Sansa.” He turns his shining eyes on her. “His _hands_ …they were so… _soft_ and… they went everywhere. I didn’t want him to see how much it got to me. I tried so hard to be still. But, Sansa, he wouldn’t _stop_.” he bites his lip. “I swear, I tried to hide how it was affecting me—I don’t think I scarcely breathed. But… _Oh, Sansa_ , it was like he could tell. Like he could see what I was hiding. He kept going where I didn’t want him to, and places I didn’t even think of… gods, he even washed between my fingers.”

His head sinks at this and Sansa thinks if it hadn’t, she might see the deep color rising up his face, despite the dimness of the room. Sansa too is struck by this detail, though admittedly she can’t say immediately why this seemingly innocuous act should be any more pervasive than anything else Ramsay might have done—and _had_ done. Then her eyes drift down to the pale, dexterous fingers, now wrapped tightly around the back of the chair as if to hide themselves. Her thoughts drift to the delicate skin between the calloused pads, spared from the elements and the constant wear of course work tools. The gentle attention focused there must have been a truly disarming breech on Jon’s person.

“For a while, he only touched my scars.” Jon raises his head again but his eyes remain far away. Sansa feels certain to which scars he’s referring. “Just moved his fingers over them, real light, almost like he was…admiring them.” Unconsciously, Jon’s hand rises to his abdomen, as if to find the marks of his healed stab wounds through his shirt.

“I don’t remember a time I ever felt so at ease...” he trails off. “I got to feeling so comfortable that I closed my eyes. Didn’t even notice when he’d stopped talking to me.”

He goes silent for a time, returning his hand to the back of the chair. When he speaks again his voice is soft and wondering.

“At one point, I heard a sound. A voice, low and drawn out, like a…a moan. I opened my eyes and looked at him then. And—oh, Sansa,” he turns to her and even in the failing light, she can see the gleaming beads in his eyes. “He _knew_. I was so ashamed and sick with myself I almost bit of my own tongue off.” He takes a moment to subdue the emotion rising in his voice. “But he didn’t say anything to show he’d heard it, just kept going, kept moving his hands over me, watching me with that same look. Like I’d pleased him.

“Oh, Sansa, I hated what he was doing all the while, but still I didn’t stop it. Not even when he…” He looks down and Sansa instantly recalls visions of Ramsay’s arm wedged deep between Jon’s naked thighs. “I didn’t like it, but I can’t say I objected to it either,” he says bitterly. “It wasn’t anything like—he wasn’t trying to…” he gives her another unsteady glances at which she nods again. “I think he only did it to show that he could, to show that he… had a right to it.”

She’s glad that he’s looking away from her so he doesn’t see the wells forming in her own eyes.

“And I let him, Sansa. I let him.” His head falls again causing his hair to tumble forward. He looks as if he would buckle beneath his own weight were he not bracing himself on the back of the chair.

“You did it to protect yourself, Jon. You did it to protect _me_.” It’s the first time she’s spoken in a while and her voice cracks with both disuse and emotion.

“That isn’t true, Sansa.” He looks up at her, his own voice impossibly steady and firm. “Not a word. I did it on my own. You weren’t even mentioned.”

“He didn’t need to mention me, Jon,” she asserts, but can’t quell the tremor in her voice this time. “You know the arrangement as well as I do—as well as he does. He didn’t need to say it!”

“Enough, Sansa. I know what you would think, and I wish it were so, but it isn’t. I acted on no honor nor duty to you when I went with him. I knew it as I did it. He didn’t force me Sansa. I did it on my own.”

She is shaking her head and words are falling from her mouth without any order or meaning. The vision of Jon before her is growing hazy and blotched.

“If you had seen it, Sansa, you would know that I speak the truth. If you had seen me… _keening_ to his touch like a…a _hound_.” His face twists in self-revulsion.

She smears her sleeve across her eyes.  

“No, Jon,” She says but Jon doesn’t seem to hear her.

He’s staring into the table again, but appearing not to see it.

It’s the same thing that had happened to Theon. Ramsay had used both punishment and affection in turns to make the man dependent and even desirous of his lord’s praise. Like a dog, Sansa thinks. _A hound_ , Jon had said

So Ramsay will now try his methods on Jon. He will try to train him. Break him, more like it. Certainly, he hardly ever touches Jon unless to cause his harm. This must have been a most disorienting kind of torture from the man who’d been the cause of so much suffering and loss in Jon’s life.

She thinks that he’s done talking to her and that she should leave now. She even thinks she _wants_ to leave now, even if it’s to return to Ramsay’s bed.

But then Jon is speaking again.

“I am not the man you knew, Sansa. He didn’t maim me, but what he took will no sooner grow back.”

Though his voice is hollow, the words are dense and fill every space in the chamber, leaving room for nothing else.

“So, when the way is clear, you go,” he says, not meeting her eyes. “You understand, Sansa. When you find your chance, you take it and don’t worry for me.”

“Stop it, Jon. He’ll kill you. He said he would if anything happened to me.”

“He won’t,” Jon says and there’s such plain certainty in his tone that Sansa is at a loss for a response.

“Well, so what then? So he lets you live. At what cost? Will he then send out pieces of you in wrapped packages all over the realm until I return? It will have been a waste, Jon.”

He looks away.

Admittedly, a part of her thinks Jon is right, that it would be better if she left. Not because Jon is too far gone for saving, but because that way, he would fight. Ramsay would certainly have a hard time at sending out bits of him with Jon finally defending himself, having been relieved of the burden of protecting her.

 _Would_ he fight though? From what he says, it seems somehow unlikely. Instead, would Jon simply supplant her position at Ramsay’s side, taking her abuse in her stead in much the same was as he’d done in the Great Hall after the battle? In the event that Sansa _does_ escape, even if Ramsay chose to spare Jon’s life, it would be no mercy to him. If his staying brought them any good at all, it would only distract Ramsay enough for Sansa to truly slip away.   

But Jon is surely aware of all of that.

“I can see what you’re doing,” She says. “I’m not so blind, Jon.”

He lifts his head to look at her.

“I believe that you went willingly with Ramsay, but not for yourself. You think that you can keep him away from me by keeping his attention on you. You think that if I get away, you’ll have earned enough esteem through your obedience that he’ll spare you. Gods,” Sansa says an almost laughs. “You even think that your presence will be enough to distract him from hunting me down again, don’t you? Are you so brash that you would let him _cut_ you just to earn his favor?”

“ _No!_ ” Jon’s eyes are blown wide by the boldness of Sansa’s accusations. Still, the multitude of expressions all battling for simultaneous representation on Jon’s face tells her she’s right.

“No. I knew he wouldn’t – _do that_ ,” he stumbles.

“Oh, really? You didn’t look so sure of it when I walked in on him holding a knife to your cock. What did you think he would do, Jon?”

He opens his mouth with a ready response but stops, apparently thinking better of it. Taking a deep breath, he straightens and moves to stand at the window. From behind him, Sansa sees the puffs of breath rising around his head in the little light still pooling in through the window. The heavy set of his shoulders seems to lighten.

“At most,” he says, with weary resignation. “I thought he might flay me a bit.”

“And you would have allowed _that_?” she says before she can stop herself.

When it comes to Jon, she knows she must be patient, be gentle or he’ll withhold things from her. As she is the only person left with whom Jon can be open, as he is to her, she doesn’t want to scold him into silence. Still, she fails to see how flaying could be a vast improvement upon gelding, or at the very least how it could warrant such a casual response.

Fortunately, he seems unfettered by her tone, and responds in the same impassive manner.

“When he told me to get on the table, he said he wasn’t going to hurt me. And I went, reasoning that if he’d planned to gut me right there, he wasn’t likely to be so obvious about it. When he pulled out the knife though,” he makes a soft sound almost like a laugh. “I had a bit of a tougher time at justifying it.

“You asked me, Sansa, if I would have let him do it.” Jon turns to look at his sister over his shoulder, eyes soft amidst the mass of curls. “I would have. And I would have let him do much worse if it meant sparing you from it. I promised I would keep you safe, Sansa, and I intend to keep that promise. If I can put this stolen life to no more use, let me do that at least. Let me keep my word to you, Sansa. It’s all that I have.”

He ends shakily and there’s a small, constant tremor in his fists, which Sansa isn’t certain is from the cold.

Solemnly, she nods. What else can she do?

He takes a moment, waiting for the subtle quaking of his body to settle. When he speaks again, his voice is firm and unwavering.

“Then, promise me that when you find a chance, you’ll take it. You’ll go. I will help you if I can, but if the time comes and I can’t follow you, you don’t wait for me, you understand? You go to safety.”

Sansa opens her mouth to object but the combatting anxiety and weariness in Jon’s eyes stop her.

Of course she could never make such a promise and Jon must surely know it. Still, he looks so depleted and so desperate in this moment, that she wants to give him something— _anything_ to ease him. 

So she says, “I will do my best.”

However reluctantly, Jon seems to accept this.

Although his eyes drift away from her again, Sansa’s remain trained to him, trailing the bold silhouette of his form made by the window’s light behind him. He is done now, she can see. Despite the prevailing darkness, she can still read the exhaustion beneath the rigid set of his shoulders. The admonition along with the trauma of earlier have depleted the last of his reserves. She should go now and let him rest.

Instead of leaving however, she moves toward him.

As his body first stiffens then melts back into hers, she suspects there was more truth to his earlier recount than she’d thought.

“What are you doing?” He asks, as Sansa begins tugging him backward by the arm.

She doesn’t answer but persists in guiding him toward the bed.

“Ramsay—“ he begins as he watches her climb onto the small cot.

“I’ll only stay until it’s fully dark, then I’ll go,” She says with finality, settling herself near the wall.

Jon is uneasy as he stands over the cot but at last, his own weariness, combined with the promise of a body to warm his own against prevail over his misgivings.

 

A short time later, as she is stroking his head where it lies atop the straw-stuffed pillow beside her, she feels the gentle warmth of his breath on her face and realizes that she too has longed for the touch of a loved one. She hadn’t realized she’d been bearing a hollowness in her chest until it was filled at once by Jon’s hearty nearness. It is a faintly familiar feeling and she realizes with an ache of loss that the last time she’d felt anything like it was some years past, when she would lie with her mother while the woman’s magical fingers combed  through her hair, alieving all of her childish worries with the gentlest of touches. Her fingers would play in Sansa’s hair in much the way that Sansa’s now play in Jon’s.

One of her brother’s hands is entwined in her hair between them while the other rests on her arm, its thumb idly smoothing up and down the clothed pad of her shoulder, both comforting her and revealing to her that his is not asleep.

She has stayed longer than she’d intended, having been lost in the heat and tenderness of her brother’s proximity. Even his hair seems to coil around her fingers in a gentle attempt to capture and keep her there.

The soft light of the single candle by the bed creates a golden lining that runs up the length of Jon’s body, pronouncing the curvature of his physique beneath the blanket and highlighting the delicate madness of his curls.

_Oh, my beautiful Jon._

When her wandering gaze travels at last to her brother’s face, she sees that his dark eyes are now open and watching her.

For a moment, she thinks that she has spoken aloud, but Jon says, “I think it’s...”

There is a regretful furrow to his brow.

Sansa nods.

She isn’t sure of the extent to which Ramsay is privy to their private meetings, but wouldn’t risk giving him reason to journey down there and catch them this way.

When she slides down the cot to leave, Jon too rises to see her out, despite how she urges him to stay.

In the corridor, they are silent, and she can see in Jon’s face that it was no easy feat calling an end to their time together; he will now have to return to the cool emptiness of his solitary cot. Despite the considerable chill, Sansa would choose that narrow, itchy cot over the warmth of Ramsay’s bed any night. The added gift of Jon’s presence within it would make for a comfort unmatched by even the most decadent feather beds in King’s Landing.

She squeezes his hand and presses her lips to his cheek, which is course with stubble but still warm and yielding.

They part and as the distance between them grows, Sansa feels that pleasant fullness slowly drain from her chest, leaving an aching hollowness in its wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey readers! Hope you enjoyed the chapter.
> 
>  _So_ , we need to talk...
> 
> Just kidding. I'm not breaking up with you. I just wanted to say for the next couple of months, things are going to be pretty busy, so delays are imminent. 
> 
> Thank you for the support and encouragement, truly, and I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter!


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